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THE DRAGON-FLIES 

A TALE OF THE FLYING SERVICE 












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u 1 will ask a question he explained , u and you will have 
fifteen seconds in which to answer it ” (page 208) 


/ 

THE DRAGON-FLIES 

A Tale of the Flying Service 

BY 

DONAL HAMILTON HAINES 

With Illustrations 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
The Riverside Press Cambridge 


1919 




& 



*/ 

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DONAL HAMILTON HAINES 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



OCT 25 1919' 

JSC 


IX~ /5730 

©CI.A535558 U 
Recorded 


In ( L I 1 lA 


CONTENTS 


I. The Winning Points i 

II. The Price of a Victory 6 

III. A Friend in Need 16 

IV. Doubts and Fears 25 

V. Many Called — Few Chosen 34 

VI. The Shadowing of Beecher 45 

VII. Whitmore’s Story 53 

VIII. School-Days Again 60 

IX. Sprouting Wings 72 

X. The Hovering Shadow 82 

XI. The Claws of the Eagles 88 

XII. The Long Arm 93 

XIII. The Man in the Hangar 104 

XIV. Under Suspicion no 

XV. Sound Advice 120 

XVI. The Summons 126 

XVII. Going Over 132 

XVIII. “VlVENT LES AmERICAINs!” I37 

XIX. Clipped Wings 148 

XX. The Night-Raider 157 


i 

£ 


VI 


CONTENTS 


XXL Number Twelve 165 

XXII. “The Sausages” 175 

XXIII. The Long Chance 181 

XXIV. The Crippled Eagle 187 

XXV. Prisoner 195 

XXVI. Behind the German Lines 197 

XXVII. The Boomerang 205 

XXVIII. The Two Captives 213 

XXIX. The Spy 223 

XXX. The Work goes on! 235 

XXXI. The Compass that did n’t point 

North 243 

XXXII. The Eyes of the Big Guns 252 

XXXIII. The Green Wave 262 

XXXIV. Paris Waits 271 

XXXV. The Black Hawks 278 

XXXVI. The Receding Wave 288 

XXXVII. From the Hilltop 297 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“I WILL ASK A QUESTION,” HE EXPLAINED, 
“AND YOU WILL HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS 

in which to answer it” Frontispiece 
There was a tremendous splash 98 

The disaster was complete 192 

“Quick, Monsieur,” she begged 240 


Drawn by Harold Cue 




THE DRAGON-FLIES 


CHAPTER I 

The Winning Points 

From the starting-point, two hundred and twenty 
yards up the smooth stretch of black cinder path 
which lay in front of the crowded stands, six 
white figures leaped forward like one as the puff 
of smoke drifted up into the summer air from 
the muzzle of the starter’s pistol, and still like 
one they rose into the air and topped the first 
hurdle. 

Instantly the big crowd appeared to go mad. 
From different parts of the towering stands men 
and women shouted and shrieked the names of 
one or the other of the six contestants. Soon one 
name, evidently borne by the entry of the uni- 
versity on whose field the race was being con- 
tested, dominated all others. 

“ Allen! Allen! Allen!” 

Over three of the hurdles the field remained 
so closely bunched that a horse-blanket could 
have been thrown over the six bobbing heads, 


2 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


then two men began to draw away from the rest. 
One of them, a slim, sunburnt young fellow, 
with carroty red hair, and a blue letter showing 
against his white shirt, was on the inside of the 
track, while his opponent, a stocky, dark-skinned 
man, with a black, close-cropped, bullet head, 
and a pair of legs that showed knots of muscle, 
was digging his spikes into the cinders on the 
extreme outside. 

It seemed now that almost everybody was 
yelling for Allen, but from one corner of the 
stands, where fluttered banners of the same crim- 
son shade as the ribbon which crossed the stocky 
hurdler’s breast, came now frantic cries of 
“ Turner!” and “Nig!” 

Yard after yard the pair ran side by side, each 
apparently traveling at top speed, and one- 
after another they topped the white hurdles in 
the same stride. Then, when they were perhaps 
halfway down the course, the superior strength 
of the man called Turner began to tell. While 
the little knot of rooters waved their crimson 
banners and shouted themselves hoarse, the 
black head of their champion forged a little to 
the front, and he was seen to leap from the 
ground a bit ahead of his red-haired opponent. 

The cries of “Allen!” took on a new note. 
They had been triumphant, now they were des- 


THE WINNING POINTS 


3 


perate, and it was evident that the crowd be- 
lieved their man beaten. But the few inches of 
lead that Turner had gained seemed all that he 
could do. Strain as he would he could not in- 
crease the gap. Allen, his face twisted with the 
effort, but his legs still striding and leaping in 
perfect form with never a break, held to his 
place a scant yard behind. 

Had the crowd possessed one bit of knowl- 
edge that was shared by no more than three or 
four people who watched the struggle, they 
would have been even more certain that the race 
w r as as good as over and “Nig” Turner famous 
for one more victory. Fogarty, the coach who 
had trained Dick Allen, knew it; Clemmons, the 
Crimson coach, knew it; — more important still, 
both the straining hurdlers knew it. 

As Dick Allen realized that Turner was a 
bit ahead of him, this bit of knowledge flashed 
through his mind with painful force. If he did 
not regain the lost ground before they reached 
that stretch of level track which lay between the 
last hurdle and the tape, he was a beaten man, 
for on level ground, Turner was faster than he. 
His victory — if victory he was to have — must 
be won in the air above the hurdles ! 

Spurred by this knowledge, Dick made an 
effort which was destined to live long in the 


4 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


annals of the field. It seemed to him that 
already his muscles and tendons were doing all 
that they could, yet by sheer will power he forced 
them to greater endeavors. He made his feet 
shoot him from the ground over the hurdles with 
a trifle more force, made the hungry spikes 
reach for the ground a fraction of a second 
quicker as he came down, made his swinging arms 
pull his body more swiftly forward toward the 
next hurdle. 

He had no time to glance sideways at Turner 
to see whether or not his effort was succeeding, 
but he had no need to look: the great roar which 
welled up from the stands told him that he was 
doing the impossible. 

“ Dunno what the bye did,” Coach Fogarty 
said afterwards. “He didn’t exactly hurdle: 
he flew!” 

When finally Dick’s slim legs slid over the last 
hurdle, he knew that Turner was a full two 
strides behind him, and that Turner’s greater 
speed on “the flat” could hardly cut down the 
lead in those last few yards. He flung himself 
forward, knew that Turner was almost upon 
him, and then, just as the tape broke against the 
blue letter on his breast and he knew he had 
won, a twinge of pain such as he had never felt in 
all his races, seemed to tear through the muscles 


THE WINNING POINTS 


5 

on the under side of his right foot and rip its 
way up the calf of his leg. He stumbled, 
sprawled, and fell in a heap. 

A dozen men caught him up, slapped him on 
the back, shouted at him. 

“Bully for you, Dick!” 

“ That turned the trick, old horse ! ” 

“ Those five points give us the meet sure as 
shooting ! ” 

Dick grinned at them faintly. He was glad 
he had won another race, glad that those five 
points which his winning had brought meant 
another triumph for the college. But that 
demon of pain which had suddenly bitten at his 
foot was still gnawing, tearing at the overtaxed 
flesh, and in the back of his mind was a dull fear 
that he had really hurt himself, that perhaps he 
had sailed over the white hurdles for the last 
time ! 


CHAPTER II 

The Price of a Victory 

If “ Dick” Allen had won his spectacular hurdle 
race in the late spring of 1912 instead of 1917, 
it would have been quite another matter. For 
in May, 1912, the results of the Intercollegiate 
would have been spread over many columns of 
Sunday’s metropolitan dailies, and on Monday 
and Tuesday there would have been further com- 
ments, with pictures of the famous hurdler — 
one breasting the tape a few inches ahead of the 
redoubtable Turner, the other grinning con- 
sciously into the eye of the camera; and experts 
would have united in declaring that “Dick” 
Allen was practically sure of a place on the 
American team for the next Olympics. 

But in May, 1917, there were other matters 
of greater import to be set before the eyes of 
the reading public. Even on the campus the 
Sunday following, the result of the race was by 
no means the sole, or even the leading, topic of 
'conversation. The meet seemed already nearly 


THE PRICE OF A VICTORY 7 

forgotten, and men were talking of training- 
camps, submarines, and the real significance of 
the German retreat. 

Dick sat in his room that sultry afternoon 
trying to figure out just what his real feelings 
were. Scattered on the floor about his chair 
were all the Sunday papers he had been able 
to buy, for he was human and normal enough 
to enjoy thoroughly reading the accounts of his 
own prowess. But he had to confess that the 
performance did not afford him the satisfaction 
he had anticipated. 

He was sitting with one foot on the floor and 
the other, clad in an old bed-slipper, cocked up 
on a chair, while against his knee stood a stout 
cane which he had borrowed from his landlady. 
The pain which had shot through his right foot 
was not what it had been, but it was still there. 
And the mere thought of running or leaping 
made him wince. 

Nor could he forget the expression on 
Fogarty’s face when the coach had looked at his 
foot in the dressing-room afterwards. The vet- 
eran had not said much. 

“Good thing it’s the last race of the year!” 
he had muttered ; then, “ Better keep your weight 
off it a couple of days, Dick, then I ’ll have 
another look.” 


8 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


And Dick was shivering with dread at the 
thought of Fogarty’s “ other look.” 

About two o’clock other men began to drift 
into his room, until every chair and other “ sit- 
able” article of furniture in the room was oc- 
cupied. 

For a time the talk kept to the meet and 
Dick’s injury, but gradually it drifted to the one 
absorbing topic of the war. And once there it 
stayed. Such unimportant trifles as hurdle races 
and injured feet were entirely forgotten. 

Of the ten men in the room, six were already 
planning to go to the Officers’ Training Camp at 
Fort Sheridan. Two others, owing to circum- 
stances at home, felt that they simply would 
have to wait until the draft called them to the 
colors. Only two men in the room, Dick and a 
slim, dark-haired fellow curled up on a corner 
of the study table, had not told their plans. 

“What you going to do, Bob?” somebody 
asked finally. 

The man on the table looked up. 

“Me?” he asked. “Well, what do you 
think I can do ? I'd stand a fat chance getting 
into an O. T. C., wouldn’t I? If I were to ap- 
pear for the physical ‘ exam ’ they ’d reject me 
without even making me take off my necktie! 
I ’m three inches under height and twenty 


THE PRICE OF A VICTORY 9 

pounds under weight. I can’t see across the room 
without my glasses. I ’d make a swell soldier, 
I would! ” 

He tried to speak in a jesting tone, but it was 
evident to the others that his physical handicaps 
were a bitter burden. No other questions were 
asked him, and the man who had spoken turned 
quickly to Dick. 

“ How about you, Dick? ” 

Dick’s glance traveled to the open window, 
carefully avoiding the slippered foot and the 
cane. 

“I think I’ll go to Sheridan if they’ll take 
me,” he said. 

“ Take you ! ” 

Little Bob Hurlburt spoke sharply from his 
seat on the table. 

“You fellows make me tired with that sort 
of talk,” he went on. “What earthly reason is 
there for their turning down a man like Dick?” 

“Never can tell,” insisted Blake, a towering 
fellow who had played right-tackle for two 
years. “They turn ’em down for all sorts of 
queer things.” 

“ They sure do ! ” observed another voice from 
the corner of the room. “ Poor teeth or crooked 
legs, or some disease with a name a foot long 
that you never knew you had! ” 


IO 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ I knew a chap at Pittsburgh,” Blake went on, 
“that couldn’t get into the first camp. You 
ought to have seen him. You’d have said, to 
see him stripped, that he was just about perfect. 
But he ’d got flat feet from too much tennis on 
asphalt courts, and they wouldn’t have him.” 

“ For all he ’d probably have made enough 
sight better officer than seventy per cent of the 
men they did take ! ” little Hurlburt said with 
sympathetic bitterness. 

Blake shook his head slowly. 

“ Don’t know about that, Bobbie,” he said. 
“ I ’ll admit that some of these rejections do look 
like foolish work on the part of the army officials. 
Offhand you’d say this Jack Heath — the fellow 
I was talking about — would have made about 
as good an officer as you could find. He had the 
build and the staying power and the intelligence. 
And he was a whale of a shot with rifle or re- 
volver. And maybe those flat feet of his would 
never have caused any trouble. 

“ But, you see, the army can’t afford to take 
any chance. It is n’t like a football game. There 
you can shove a man into the game, knowing 
that he ’ll only last the first quarter or maybe the 
first half, and then you can put a fresh man in 
his place. In war you don’t always have the 
fresh men. Suppose Heath had gone through, 


THE PRICE OF A VICTORY n 


got clear to France, and been in some mighty 
important position when his feet went back on 
him and there wasn’t any substitute to take 
over his job! 

“See the idea? It isn’t just that a chap’s 
willing and full of pep and all that. He’s got 
to be absolutely fit. If he is n’t they don’t want 
him.” 

There was a little pause after Blake finished 
speaking; then Dick asked, “ How’d you say this 
man Heath got his flat feet, Walt? Tennis ? ” 

“Too much tennis on hard asphalt courts,” 
Blake said. “ Made ’em just as flat as a pair of 
paddles.” 

“ Did it happen suddenly or gradually?” 

“ Don’t remember. All of a sudden, I think. 
— Sling over that front page of the ‘Herald,’ 
will you, Ed? I haven’t half seen it.” 

During the rest of the time that his guests 
were there, Richard Allen took little part in the 
conversation. He could think of nothing but the 
tennis-player of whom Blake had told, and of 
his own foot — bandaged with adhesive tape 
and throbbing cruelly — which stretched out in 
front of him. 

“Coming out to lunch with us, aren’t you, 
Dick?” Tom Watson said finally as the group 
began hunting for hats and caps. 


12 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ Guess not to-night,” answered Dick. 
“ Strained my foot a bit yesterday and walk- 
ing ’s no particular fun.” 

“Nothing serious, sprain or anything, is it?” 

“Oh, no,” Dick answered' carelessly; “just 
strained it a little. I ’ll be spry as ever in a day 
or so.” 

When the others had gone he sat for a little 
while staring thoughtfully out of the window, 
then took the slipper from his injured foot and 
started to unwind the tape. But he stopped be- 
fore he had gone far and shook his head. 

“ No,” he decided, “ I won’t look at it. I ’ll 
only scare myself. Probably it will look bad, 
but really is n’t as bad as it looks. Anyhow, I ’m 
not going to waste time worrying. I ’m going 
to find out the truth in a hurry.” 

He rummaged around his closet, found an 
old tennis-slipper, and got his foot into it with 
no more than a grimace or two of pain, then 
took his cane and hobbled out into the street. 
He did not go to see the track coach. Fogarty’s 
judgment was sound enough, but Dick felt that 
he wanted a diagnosis which would carry more 
authority, and walked toward the unpretentious 
house of Dr. Lanyard. Lanyard was dean of 
the medical school and a surgeon of national 
reputation. He could, as Bob Hurlburt said, 


THE PRICE OF A VICTORY 13 

44 tell by one look into your face just how much 
it would cost to cut out your appendix ! ” 

With a beating heart Dick climbed the steps and 
obeyed the sign on the glass door which said 
44 Walk In.” An electric bell rang as he entered 
the room, but for a moment no one came. Dick 
waited, the smells and furnishings of the office,' 
helping to increase his fears. Finally the door 
opened and Dr. Lanyard, a handsome, genial man 
with a bushy white beard, came into the room. 

44 Well, young man!” he said cheerfully; “I 
never expected to have you as a patient. If it 
isn’t too late let me congratulate you on a 
mighty plucky race.” 

44 Thank you, doctor.” 

The physician settled his glasses in place and 
beamed. 

44 And now what’s the matter? — Aha!” he 
added as he caught sight of the old tennis-slip- 
per, 44 paying for your speed, eh?” 

44 I’m afraid I am,” admitted Dick, 44 and I 
want to know just how much I ’ll have to pay.” 

With a few deft movements the doctor had 
the bare foot between his hands. He didn’t 
seem to look at it at all (though any of his 
students could have told you that those keen 
blue eyes saw everything without seeming to see 
anything!), but glanced up into Dick’s face. 


14 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ Your senior year, isn’t it, Allen? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Not planning on doing any hurdling for ath- 
letic clubs or anything of that sort, were you?” 

A cold feeling gripped Dick’s heart, and he 
knew that all the color had left his face. 

“I wasn’t,” he answered, “but — do you 
mean it’s as bad as that?” 

“You’ve broken the arch,” the doctor told 
him. “ Of course it isn’t serious. Thousands of 
people have broken arches. But to an athlete 
it is mighty serious.” 

“You mean that I’m — through?” 

“ I ’m afraid so. It won’t give you any par- 
ticular trouble after a few days of discomfort. 
Won’t bother you walking. After a time you 
can play tennis, perhaps. But that foot will 
never again stand the sort of strain you put on 
it yesterday.” 

Dick made no immediate answer. He drew 
the foot toward him and looked at it. 

“ I suppose this will show?” he asked. 

“Show?” 

“I mean anybody looking at it — a doctor or 
anything like that — would know, what was the 
matter?” 

Dr. Lanyard’s mind went straight to the 
thought behind Dick’s question. His face soft- 


THE PRICE OF A VICTORY 15 

ened a little, but he did not betray his knowl- 
edge. 

“ Well, yes ; I ’m afraid it will show,” he said, 
“ Not one foot in ten thousand is subjected to the 
strain you Ve put on yours. You ’ve pretty well 
smashed the structure, and you won’t be able 
to hide the fact.” 

Dick replaced his slipper, the doctor talking 
in the meanwhile about different matters. Then 
Dick drew out his purse, a little uncertainly, for 
he had heard tales of the size of Dr. Lanyard’s 
fees — even for five-minute consultations. But 
the great physician put both hands in his trouser s- 
pockets and frowned. 

“ Put away your money, my dear fellow,” he 
commanded. “It was the merest trifle; besides 
which I should be a poor sort if I took a fee for 
the rotten truth I ’ve just had to tell you I ” 

As he watched Dick limp off down the tree- 
lined walk, the frown was still on Dr. Lanyard’s 
face, and he tapped his teeth with the tip of a 
pencil. 

“Poor boy!” he muttered. “It took a fine 
spirit to win that race yesterday after he was 
apparendy a beaten man — and yet, just because 
he did win it, Uncle Sam has probably lost a 
mighty good first lieutenant! ” 


CHAPTER III 
A Friend in Need 

In almost every college community there is to 
be found on the faculty of the institution at least 
one man of a particular type. He may be a 
brilliant instructor: he is just as likely to be a 
rather inconspicuous figure as far as classroom 
work is concerned, but he is above all other 
things the friend and adviser of the young men 
with whom he comes in contact. Usually he is 
young — not more than five or six years older 
than the seniors — and he knows to a nicety just 
what degree of intimacy to establish with his 
friends among the students. He knows that 
there are men who will be helped if they feel 
that they may call him by his first name, and that 
there are other men who would simply take 
advantage of this privilege. 

When he left Dr. Lanyard’s office, Dick 
Allen walked straight toward the rooms of ex- 
actly this sort of a man. He felt that just at 
the moment Eric Hamilton was the one man on 
earth to whom he could talk freely, and from 


A FRIEND IN NEED 


i7 

whom he might get the sort of advice which he 
sorely needed. 

Never in his life had Dick been so completely 
and wretchedly unhappy. It seemed to him that 
the blunt truth the doctor had just given him had 
spoiled everything which might lie in the 
future. The fact that his career as an athlete 
was abruptly ended was a small matter in com- 
parison with the fact that he could probably 
never wear his country’s uniform on active 
service. 

When he reached the unpretentious rooming- 
house where Hamilton lived, the big room was 
full. He was half minded to turn back : yet his 
desire to talk to Hamilton was sufficiently strong 
so that he climbed the steps and rang the bell. 

Fortunately for Dick’s peace of mind, most of 
Hamilton’s guests were young under-classmen. 
Few of them knew Allen, and the presence 
among them of the latest athletic hero was 
enough to reduce them to embarrassed silence 
and early leave-taking. Hamilton, after a single 
glance at Dick’s face, knew that his visitor had 
come for serious conversation, and made it easy 
for the others to go. 

As soon as the last freshman had found his 
hat and departed, Hamilton lighted a big pipe, 
stretched himself out in a huge easy-chair and 


i8 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


glanced searchingly at Dick through the first 
cloud of smoke. 

“ Well,” he demanded cheerfully, u what ’s the 
matter? Money? That isn’t your usual diffi- 
culty, Dick.” 

“ It ’s a whole lot worse than that, Eric,” Dick 
answered dolefully, and plunged into his story 
without further waste of time. 

Hamilton let Dick talk himself out without 
interrupting or making a single comment beyond 
nodding from time to time. When Dick had 
finished he laid his pipe on a corner of the 
mantel, and stood with his back to the fireplace 
,and his hands clasped behind him. 

“ I think I understand,” he said. “ It means 
rather more to you than to most fellows, does n’t 
it, because you’ve thought a great deal about 
this sort of thing?” 

“ Have I ! ” echoed Dick. “ Why, I ’ve 
dreamed and played and thought war since I 
was a kid. There was almost a row in our 
family when Dad wouldn’t let me try for a West 
Point appointment. And this Training Camp 
looked like the chance of a lifetime. I don’t 
see any reason why I shouldn’t have pulled 
down a good commission. I knew some fellows 
in the first camp who got captaincies, and I know 
I could have made good if they did! ” 


A FRIEND IN NEED 


19 


“ I don’t doubt that for a minute,” Hamilton 
assured him, “ but the best thing for you to do 
is to forget all about those things without loss of 
time. Blake was right in what he said to you 
this afternoon. An officer with a broken arch 
would be just as much a source of danger to his 
own troops as a shell with a faulty fuse or a 
rifle with a loose firing-pin. Army regulations 
are army regulations, and there’s no dodging 
them. Apparently you ’re shut out of the serv- 
ice just as completely by what most people 
would call a ridiculously minor defect as you 
would be if you’d lost an arm or a leg. All 
right, then drop it. There ’s no use crying over 
spilt milk.” 

“ But I can’t drop it! ” protested Dick bitterly. 
“ I ’ve talked no end about what I was going to 
do. Now what will people think when I don’t 
do anything?” 

“If you’re the sort of a yellow pup who is 
thinking about what people are going to say, 
I ’m done with you! ” Hamilton said sharply. 

“Well, of course that wasn’t just what I 
meant,” Dick said hastily, turning red; “but this 
thing has come so suddenly it’s sort of — well 
— got my goat ! I ’d wanted to do so much, and 
now I can do nothing at all! ” 

“ H’m ! ” observed Hamilton, fingering his 


20 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


long nose. “Nothing at all, eh? That’s a 
pretty broad statement. That broken arch must 
have affected so much of you that you ’d better 
trot straight back to Lanyard and ask him to 
take another look at you. Nothing at all! You 
make me rather ill, Dick. Since you can’t com- 
mand a field battery, or lead a company of in- 
fantry into a Hun trench, you’re sore on the 
world and ready to say you’re useless! We’d 
be a fine fighting race and a lot of use to France 
and England and the rest of them if we were all 
made of that sort of stuff, wouldn’t we?” 

“You know what I mean, Eric,” persisted 
Dick. “I want to fight! Of course I can get 
some kind of a job and do something that’ll 
help, but that is n’t what I want.” 

Hamilton laughed as he dropped back into 
his big chair. 

“ I might give you a long lecture on the value 
of real service,” he said, “which consists in 
doing not the thing you want to do, but the thing 
that needs to be done and that nobody else wants 
to do. But I ’m not going to give you that lec- 
ture — which would bore both of us. And I 
guess it would be useless into the bargain. It ’s 
hard to make a barnyard fowl out of a fighting- 
cock, and I’m afraid that’s what you are! — 
What’s the matter with the air?” 


A FRIEND IN NEED 


21 


“The air?” repeated Dick, blankly. 

“Yes. To the best of my knowledge an 
aviator with a broken arch is exactly as valuable 
as one with two good arches. Furthermore, flat- 
foot is just about the only physical disability you 
could possess and still get into the air service.” 

Dick took a long breath. 

“ Never thought of it! ” he confessed. 

“ I ’ll bet you didn’t! ” laughed the instructor. 
“You’ve acted more like a hysterical woman 
than I ’ve ever seen you in the four years I ’ve 
known you ! ” 

Dick had risen from his seat as Hamilton 
spoke and walked toward the window. When 
he turned back he astonished his companion by 
showing him a face on which something like ab- 
solute horror was written. 

“It’s no great wonder that I never thought 
of it,” he said soberly; then paused, and added 
after an instant, “Eric, is there anything on 
earth of which you have a peculiar and deadly 
fear?” 

The older man looked at him in quick surprise, 
hesitated, then laughed a little. 

“ Well, yes,” he confessed, “ I don’t suppose 
there’s any schoolgirl who possesses a greater 
fear of snakes than I do.” 

“ You wouldn’t be very likely to go after the 


22 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


job of keeper of the snakes at some zoo, then, 
would you?” 

“ I certainly would not.” 

“What I’m going to say is bound to sound 
queer,” Dick began. “ I ’ve just been complain- 
ing because I seem to have lost my chance to do 
any real fighting. You remind me of the air 
service, and I confess that I ’d never thought of 
it. I hadn’t. There was no more likelihood of 
my thinking of it than of your thinking about 
that snake-tending job ! 

“ I don’t know just how T vivid and terrible 
your fear of snakes really is, but if it’s as bad as 
my terror of awful heights, then, by George, 
Eric, I ’m sorry for you ! 

“I believe I was born with that fear inside 
me. As a kid I used to have one particular 
nightmare, night after night. In it I was tied to 
the end of a rope about a hundred feet long and 
set to swinging. There was n’t any real danger. 
I knew that I wouldn’t fall. It was just the 
horror of height, of that swift rush through 
empty air that used to wake me up sweating and 
screaming with fear. 

“ Of course I ’ve outgrown that dream, but I 
haven’t rid myself of the fear of high places. 
I don’t believe I could force myself to climb to 
the top of a tall windmill or scaffolding. I 


A FRIEND IN NEED 


23 

can’t drive myself to go to the edge of a roof 
or a high bank. If I ’m on top of a tall building 
I want to sit down right in the middle of the 
roof. I can’t even swing in a kid’s swing. I 
can’t even climb to the top of a step-ladder with- 
out queer feelings ! ” 

“ I ’m not sure,” Hamilton said with a slight 
smile, “that I shan’t deliver that little sermon 
on service after all. Your case is peculiar, Dick. 
You come of fighting stock. The desire to 
handle weapons, to lead men into battle, is in 
your blood. Now this accident leaves you 
apparently just one chance of fighting, and 
that ’s in the way which fairly curdles your blood 
with fear. 

“I said a while back that real service con- 
sisted in doing the thing which had to be done 
and which nobody else wanted to do. I might 
add that it also consists in doing the thing that 
is hard for you. I dislike preaching sermons 
as much as you dislike listening to them, and as 
you know I ’m no believer in heroics or anything 
of the sort. But it does look to me as though 
right here you have a chance to do a pretty big 
thing. 

“Fear of height is a deadly, cold sort of 
terror. It just happens, Dick, that I sat close 
enough to the track yesterday so that I saw 


24 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


every detail of that race of yours. I think I 
saw the moment when you realized that only a 
superhuman effort could save you from defeat 
and forced yourself to that superhuman effort. 
All right! Here’s a chance for a bigger 
effort and in a vastly bigger cause. It’s some- 
thing more now than just winning a hurdle race. 
Get the idea?” 

“ Yes,” answered Dick, “I get it.” 

He sat silent for a minute, then rose and held 
out his hand. 

“Thanks, Eric,” he said. “You sure can 
hit the nail on the head.” 

“You’ll try for the air service, then?” 

“Of course!” 

“Good boy!” exclaimed Hamilton as he 
gripped the other’s hand. “ And you can promise 
yourself right now that I’ll be at the training 
field to watch your first flight if it ’s in Honolulu 
— and they ’ll let me in ! ” 


CHAPTER IV 

Doubts and Fears 


There is no better place than the seat of a rail-' 
road car for long, hard thinking. Dick Allen 
had nearly a four-hour ride, and during the 
entire length of it he had the seat wholly to 
himself. 

He was honest enough to admit to himself 
that he faced the ordeal which lay before him 
with a good deal of actual dread. And this 
dread was really of two sorts. He was afraid, 
that he would pass the tests — and then again 
he was afraid that he wouldn’t! The train was 
carrying him swiftly toward Chicago, where 
applicants for the flying branch of the service 
were being given the physical examinations and 
tests designed to determine their fitness for the 
work. Within a couple of days he would prob- 
ably know whether he was to be a cadet aviator, 
or whether his bit would have to be done in 
something like Red Cross work. 

Aside from the injury to his foot, Dick knew) 
that there was nothing wrong with his body. But 


2 6 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


he also knew that prospective bird-men were 
given far different tests from those to which 
army and navy candidates were subjected. It was 
the thought of these which made him shiver. 

“ My only chance,” he said to himself again 
and again, “ is to cover up the fact that I ’m 
afraid to get up in the air. And I don’t see how 
in blazes I ’m going to do that if they ask me to 
climb or balance myself or anything of that 
sort.” 

He was aroused from his unpleasant thoughts 
by a hand laid on his shoulder. He looked up 
into a lean, pleasant face and a pair of sharp, 
brown eyes that now were smiling. 

“ I always believe in hunches,” explained the 
man who was standing beside Dick’s seat, “ and 
I ’ve got a hunch that you and I are bound for 
the same place. If I ’m wrong I ’ll apologize 
and clear out.” 

Dick confessed his own destination, and the 
other nodded brightly and dropped into the 
empty seat beside him. 

“I don’t very often go wrong,” he said, 
smiling. “I’m nervous enough to want to talk, 
aren’t you?” 

“ Yes,” confessed Dick. “ But I ’d like to know 
what made you guess I was going to take the 
tests.” 


DOUBTS AND FEARS 


27 


“ Don’t really know,” answered his com- 
panion. “I’ve always been able to do that — 
not every time, you know, or anything spooky 
like that, but occasionally. Every once in a while 
I know that I ’m going to meet somebody around 
a corner, and once for no apparent reason I let 
one train go and took a later one, and the first 
train went through an open drawbridge ! And I 
get those hunches on little things. I ’m twice the 
tennis-player I ought to be because so many times 
I can guess where the other fellow is going to 
put the ball and be there to meet it.” 

Dick glanced at his seat-mate with interest. 
He was considerably older, — somewhere, Dick 
guessed, between twenty-five and thirty; he was 
of medium height, quite thin, but with a sugges- 
tion of wiry strength. His face had the dark, 
even color of a man who has spent much time 
outdoors in all sorts of weather. He wore an 
obviously old suit with the air of a man who has 
much better clothes, but does n’t care to put them 
on. He had black hair and a small black mus- 
tache. 

“My name’s Whitmore,” he said. “And 
yours ? ” 

Dick told him. 

“Ever flown?” Whitmore asked. 

“No,” answered Dick. “Have you?” 


28 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Whitmore laughed. “Well, I have and I 
haven’t! ” he said. “When I was a kid I was 
crazy about balloons, just naturally crazy about 
’em. I ran away and went up in one at a county 
fair when I was eleven years old, and got prob- 
ably the worst thrashing for it that any young- 
ster ever got. If I hadn’t had to hustle for a 
living, I suppose I might have gone in for 
aerial experimenting like Bell and Santos- 
Dumont, but just about the time I was ready to 
tackle the thing seriously, I had to begin earning 
the money to feed myself. So outside two or 
three balloon trips and one ride in an old-fash- 
ioned army dirigible, I ’ve never flown.” 

Dick hurried to ask another question lest 
Whitmore begin questioning him. 

“ But you know you really can fly, don’t you? ” 

“Yes, I do,” answered the older man. “I 
believe I could get into a plane this minute and 
make the thing go. You see, I ’ve been fooling 
with engines and machinery all my life. My 
job’s engineering.” 

“ Here in the West? ” Dick asked. 

“Well, no,” answered Whitmore; “I’ve 
knocked about a good bit.” 

And without further urging he set forth upon 
a tale of wanderings and adventures that fairly 
took Dick’s breath. There was hardly a corner 


DOUBTS AND FEARS 


29 


of the world that he had not seen and learned 
to know. He had had a hand in the building 
of railroads, docks, bridges, towns, had seen 
wildernesses turned into farming countries, 
deserts into grazing lands. There seemed to 
be no mechanical device, from a towering crane 
to a hand-lathe, which he had not used. And he 
was just as familiar with all sorts of men as he 
was with all sorts of machines. Many of the 
expeditions on which he had been engaged had 
been little less than armed invasions of wild 
lands; some of the exploring expeditions had 
turned out to be little wars. 

Whitmore’s talk was so engrossing that Dick 
paid no attention to the passage of time or the 
whereabouts of the train, and it was with sur- 
prise that he suddenly discovered that they were 
running into the train-shed in Chicago. The 
engineer rose, pulled down a battered traveling- 
bag from the rack and held out his hand. 

“ Well,” he said, “ we ’re bound to meet again 
before many hours. Know the Windy City?” 

“ Not very well,” answered Dick. 

“Wish I had time to take you about a bit,” 
Whitmore said as he moved toward the door. 
“ But to tell the truth I ’m going to be as busy 
as a pup with the fleas between now and the 
time I go before the examiners.” 


30 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“Then you haven’t given up your business 
yet?” Dick asked in surprise. 

“Oh, bless you, yes!” answered Whitmore. 
“But there’s always a chance that they’ll turn 
me down, and I believe in preparing the ground 
in advance. I think I ’ll make a good air-pilot, 
but the board may not. And I ’ve a few friends 
in the Engineers who happen to be here in 
Chicago. I want a word with them in case this 
other business falls through.” 

“I shouldn’t think there was much chance of 
their turning you down,” Dick said as they de- 
scended the steps of the car. 

“No more should I,” answered the engineer. 
“ But the African climate may have done things 
to my insides that the board won’t like. 
They’re a particular lot, you know. So-long! ” 

Dick stood watching the slim figure until it 
was swallowed up in the crowd, then set out 
for a hotel with a heavy heart. 

“If there’s a chance that they’ll reject a man 
like that,” he muttered, “ what ghost of a show 
is there for a fellow like me?” 

There is, Dick discovered within a few hours 
of the time he registered at a Chicago hotel, a 
good deal of truth in the old saying that “ birds 
of a feather flock together.” He was sitting 


DOUBTS AND FEARS 


3*i 

in the lobby of the hotel when he noticed a 
young fellow walking toward him. 

“ Your name Allen? ” asked the new comer. 

“Yes,” replied Dick. 

“ Mine ’s Anson,” announced the other, “ and 
I ’m another of us ! I saw Dave Whitmore half 
an hour ago and he told me about meeting you 
on the train. Said you’d probably be here. 
Say, you are n’t by any chance the Allen who won 
the hurdles for Western last June, are you? ” 

Dick admitted that he was that particular 
Allen, and for half an hour they had a fruitful 
subject of conversation. Anson proved to be a 
likable young chap from Evanston, a junior at 
Northwestern, who had quit college to go into 
the air-service, and who was cheerfully scepti- 
cal about his own chances. 

“ I ’m pretty thin,” he admitted, “ and my 
hearing’s never been just right. Guess I could 
scrape through the army tests, but I ’d so much 
rather do this.” 

“How do you happen to know Whitmore?” 
Dick asked. 

“ Known him since I was a kid,” answered 
Anson. “Everybody knows Dave, at least 
everybody in Chicago.” 

“ How many of us do you suppose are going 
to take the examinations?” 


32 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“As near as I can find out there are six,” 
Anson surprised him by saying. “ Oh, I ’ve 
nosed around a little to see what the prospects 
were,” he explained, seeing Dick’s expression. 

“Any idea who the others are?” 

“I’ve been told that we three are the only 
civilians,” Anson replied. “Besides us there ^ 
are two soldiers and a sailor. Suppose we see 
if we can find ’em.” 

They failed in their search for the other 
members of the sextette of candidates, and when 
they came back to Dick’s hotel they found David 
Whitmore standing in the lobby staring mourn- 
fully at an empty cigarette-case. 

“Thought I might run into you chaps,” he 
greeted them. 

“ Why the emptiness and the gloomy ex- 
pression?” asked Anson, pointing at Whit- 
more’s case. 

The engineer laughed. 

“Haven’t smoked for four days,” he con- 
fessed, “ and I ’m not going to until after the 
exams. What you been doing? ” 

They told him, and as Dick had half expected, 
Whitmore had discovered what they had failed 
to find. 

“ Chap I used to pal with in college, medical 
fellow; has been on the board here,” explained 


DOUBTS AND FEARS 


33 


Whitmore. “Just my luck; he’s packing his 
grip now; transferred somewhere East. But he 
happened to have seen our prospective compan- 
ions-in-arms who came prowling around looking 
for information. Seems there are four of them. 

^A sailor, — Dixon says he ’s big enough to pick 
up an aeroplane and carry it off, — two soldiers, 
National Guardsmen from one of those crack 
New England regiments, he thought, and a 
civilian.” 


CHAPTER V 

Many Called — Few Chosen 

The seven young men who gathered the next 
morning in the bare offices of the examining 
board represented a wide variety of types. 
With the exception of Whitmore, they were all 
young, their ages probably varying from twenty 
to twenty-three. 

Alsop, the sailor, was a veritable young Her- 
cules, well over six feet, with a tremendous pair 
of shoulders and a face of a twelve-year-old. 
Of the two soldiers, one called Norton was short, 
heavy-set, heavy-featured; the other, Heatherly, 
was tall and slim. 

Of the four civilians, Anson was by far the 
frailest-looking; Dick the best-proportioned and 
well-set-up; Whitmore certainly appeared made 
of the toughest fibre and best fitted for hard 
service. 

Beecher, the last of the seven, differed from 
all the others. He was a man of medium height 
and build with a rather pale skin, deep blue 
eyes, and very fair hair cut close to his head. 


MANY CALLED — FEW CHOSEN 35 

His eyebrows and eyelashes were of such a pale 
yellow as to be invisible at a distance of a few 
feet, and his mouth was thin-lipped and hard. 

No time was wasted in preliminaries. The 
examining officers (who were in reality merely 
a set of hard-worked, deadly serious men, but 
who were destined to seem so many ogres to 
Dick before the ordeal was finished) got to 
work without delay. 

The first test was of the heart and blood 
pressure, both before and after running up the 
stiff flight of stairs which led to the office. At 
the conclusion of it, one of the officers, after 
putting his stethoscope over Anson’s heart, 
shook his head. 

“No use going farther with you,” he said 
crisply. “ You won’t do.” 

Anson turned white as a sheet. 

“You mean — ” he stammered. 

“Oh, don’t worry!” the officer said kindly, 
moved to pity by the white face. “ You ’ll prob- 
ably live to be seventy and die peacefully in your 
bed, but you won’t do for air service.” 

There was no time for farewells. Anson 
gave Dick and Whitmore a nod, a wave of the 
hand, and a curt “ See you later ! ” and was gone. 

He was the only one of the candidates elimi- 
nated on the first test, nor did any of the others 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


36 

go out am the “first round,” which included 
tests of the lungs, eyes, ears, nose, and throat. 
After these had been finished, Whitmore whis- 
pered to Dick: 

“That’s the end of my worries! They can 
do their worst now. My throat and lungs were 
all that made me uneasy! ” 

By the time these various tests had been com- 
pleted on the six men, the first day’s business 
was finished. Whitmore and Dick left the 
rooms together. 

“We’d better not try to look up Anson,” 
Whitmore said. “ He ’ll probably be pretty sick; 
and sore and won’t feel like talking to anybody. 
But I think I’ll get my things and move over 
to your hotel. It ’s quieter, and I intend to sleep 
nine hours to-night.” 

“ How about the rest; do you think they ’ll all 
pass?” Dick asked. 

“I don’t think so,” answered the engineer 
thoughtfully. “ My guess is that the sailor and 
one or both of the Guardsmen will fail. I think 
you and I will come through. And I believe 
Beecher will.” 

“ I don’t like that fellow Beecher! ” exclaimed 
Dick. 

“ Can’t say I like him myself,” Whitmore re- 
plied. “ But he ’s exactly the type most likely to 


MANY CALLED — FEW CHOSEN 37 

pass if there ’s nothing organically unsound 
about him. He looks to me just about normal, 
and I understand that ’s the great thing for this 
particular work.” 

The next morning the ordeal was resumed, and 
if Dick had known precisely what was in store 
for him he might not have slept so soundly. 

Having examined the organs of the candi- 
dates, the medical officers now turned their at- 
tention to their legs, arms, and bone-structure. 
Everything from toes to fingers was subjected to 
the most rigid and thorough examination. 

Norton, one of the soldiers, was thrown out 
at this point because of an old break in his upper 
arm, which had evidently not been sufficient to 
keep him out of the army. 

Dick spent an unpleasant ten minutes when 
they found his injured foot, and felt mighty glad 
that he had paid Dr. Lanyard a second visit and 
taken the physician’s advice. Since the day of 
the race he had kept off the foot as much as 
possible, subjecting it to no unusual strain, yet 
using no artificial support to hold it up, with the 
result that it was in much better shape than it 
would have been had he not taken such good 
care of it. Nevertheless there was a great deal 
of head-shaking and muttering on the part of 
the examiners, and Dick felt sure that had the 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


38 

rest of his body not been so exceedingly fit they 
might have held him out. He drew a huge sigh 
of relief when they finally left it and passed to 
another part of his body. 

It was the next part of the examination that 
Dick had dreaded most of all, and his fear was- 
increased because he had little or no idea what : 
sort of things he would be made to do. 

The first test, however, seemed absurdly easy. 
The five men were made to stand in a line, then 
told to shut their eyes and stand on their tip-toes 
until ordered to lower themselves to their heels. 

He closed his eyes and balanced himself on 
his toes, prepared for any sort of sensations. 
Nothing happened. He could hear the breath- 
ing of the other men and the ticking of the watch 
in the officer’s hand. He was conscious of noth- 
ing except a slight tendency to sway back and 
forth, and an increasing protest from the muscles 
of his calves and thighs. 

“Steady, number four!” the officer’s voice 
said sharply, and at the same instant there was 
the sound of scuffing feet as though one of the 
men had lost his balance and was trying to re- 
cover it. 

A moment later the officer spoke again. “All 
right, at ease!” he said, and five pairs of heels 
thudded down onto the bare floor. 


MANY CALLED — FEW CHOSEN 39 

Before Dick could wonder whether or not he 
had done what was expected of him, or guess 
the identity of the luckless number four who had 
incurred the officer’s warning, they were sub- 
jected to the test of the middle-ear. 

Again the ordeal proved queer rather than 
hard or painful. A long rubber tube was put 
into a man’s ear, than water poured into the 
other end of the tube. He was then asked to 
fix his eyes on a white spot on the wall. When it 
came Dick’s turn he experienced no great trouble 
in doing what he was told. His head felt very 
heavy, there was a most troublesome roaring 
going on, and his eyes seemed slow to answer 
the command of his brain, but he managed to 
focus them on the white spot. 

The famous whirling-chair test, designed sim- 
ply to test the general sense of equilibrium, came 
next. The candidates were put in the chair 
and spun around with their eyes closed, then told 
to open them and made to fix objects with their 
eyes or touch them with the extended finger. 

No sooner was Dick seated in the chair and 
spinning dizzily around than all his courage de- 
serted him. He lost all his sense of balance. 
He had no idea which way he was facing, or 
whether the chair had been spun ten times or a 
hundred. And when the sickening motion finally 


40 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ceased and he heard the officer telling him to 
open his eyes, he pitched forward and would have 
fallen to the floor had the surgeon not steadied 
him with his arm. 

Dick’s heart went down into his boots. He 
had been afraid of just this thing. He had made 
the most tremendous effort of his will to keep 
himself erect in the chair, but it had been phys- 
ically impossible. He pulled himself upright 
with an effort, rubbed one hand across his eyes 
and said unsteadily: 

“Can’t I have one more chance at that, sir? 
I believe I could keep from falling now that I 
know what it’s like.” 

“ Who in blazes said anything about not fall- 
ing?” the officer demanded irritably. “Close 
your eyes again.” 

Dick obeyed, and once more the dizzy spinning 
of the hated cbair commenced. This time when 
the motion stopped and Dick opened his eyes, 
the officer held out his finger and told Dick to 
try and touch it. He gathered all his faculties 
for a great effort, only to realize with a sickening 
sensation that he had missed the extended finger 
by many inches. He tried a second time with 
the same result. 

“All right. That’s enough! Next!” said 
the officer. 


MANY CALLED — FEW CHOSEN 41 

Dick left his seat (knowing that in the future 
an ordinary swivel-chair would strike more ter- 
ror into him than any dentist’s chair!) and fairly 
staggered against the wall, from where he 
watched the testing of Beecher and the sailor and 
the soldier, Whitmore having finished before 
Dick. 

The spinning of the chair had no effect what- 
soever upon the huge sailor. He remained per- 
fectly erect when told to open his eyes, and 
experienced not the slightest difficulty in touching 
the extended hand of the officer. Heatherly 
pitched nearly out of his seat as Dick had done, 
but Dick noticed one difference. Sometimes the 
soldier swayed one way and sometimes the other. 

When it came Beecher’s turn, Dick was im 
terested in the expression of the blond man’s 
face. Hitherto it had been expressionless as a 
mask, and he had gone through all the tests with- 
out giving evidence of any emotion whatsoever. 
Now, however, he had a tense, strained look as 
though he was making a great effort. And when 
he opened his eyes at the examiner’s command, 
he too pitched sideways in his chair. 

“ H ’m ! ” muttered the officer ; “ that ’s funny 1 
Close your eyes again.” 

Beecher did so, and the process was repeated 
with the same result. The surgeon stood finger- 


42 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ing his mustache and eying the man in the chair 
as though perplexed. 

“ Once more ! ” he ordered, and again the 
chair was spun, and again Beecher swayed to the 
left and his groping finger prodded to the left as 
it sought to reach the officer’s hand. 

Frowning a little, the officer repeated the test 
with the rubber tube, and the results of this 
seemed to perplex him even more. Finally, how- 
ever, the frown left his face and he smiled 
grimly. 

“Either you’re upsetting some well-estab- 
lished medical laws, young man, or you’ve got 
the most stubborn will I ever heard of!” he 
said non-committally. “You men can get on 
your street clothes, and then I ’ll talk to you a 
minute in the outer office. 

“Only three of you — Whitmore, Beecher, 
and Allen — have successfully passed all the tests 
for the aviation service,” he told them later. 
“ That is nothing to the discredit of you men who 
have failed to pass. It is simply that you are n’t 
fitted physically for this particular branch of war 
work. But there is no reason why you should n’t 
do well in the branches whose uniforms you 
already wear.” 

A few minutes later Dick and Whitmore were 
walking side by side through the street. 


MANY CALLED — FEW CHOSEN 43 

They had walked several blocks from the 
building where they had taken the examinations, 
when somebody behind them said: 

“I say, you fellows ! ” 

Both turned to see Beecher overtaking them 
from behind with long strides. 

u I owe you my thanks, Allen ! ” he exclaimed 
as soon as he caught up with them. 

“What for?” Dick asked in surprise. 

“What you said when they spun you in the 
chair.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean.” 

“ Why, it’s like this,” explained Beecher. “ I 
knew from the look in that examiner’s eye that 
I ’d been a little off on that water-test, and that 
I was hanging on by a hair. Then, when Whit- 
more tipped out of the chair I was surprised, 
because I thought of course that the thing to do 
was to sit up straight, and I figured Whitmore 
would do it. 

“ Then when you tipped, I was still more sur- 
prised, because you ’d come through everything 
else the best of all of us. You could tell that 
from the way those surgeons watched you. And, 
you see, I knew I wouldn’t tip out of the chair, 
because I ’d heard about the test and I ’d tried 
it. So I thought I was going to succeed where 
you two had failed. Then you begged him for 


44 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


another chance, and he wanted to know who’d 
said anything about sitting up straight. See? 

“ I knew then that the thing for me to do was 
to tip, and I had to work mighty hard to do it 
convincingly. I fooled him, too. That’s why 
he made me take the water test again. He 
didn’t expect me to wobble. So, you see, if it 
hadn’t been for what you made him say, I’d 
have sat straight as a ramrod, and they’d have 
thrown me out. I surely am grateful ! ” 

“Glad I happened to help you,” Dick an- 
swered without much enthusiasm. He hadn’t 
liked Beecher from the start, and the man’s con- 
fession only served to increase his dislike. 

Beecher waited an instant, then turned away 
with a wave of the hand. 

“Good-bye!” he said. “We’re pretty sure 
to meet again now.” 

The other two nodded casually, turned away* 
and walked back toward their hotel. 


CHAPTER VI 

The Shadowing of Beecher 

David Whitmore stood in front of the mirror 
in his room, shaving, while Dick, who had been 
an earlier riser, sat curled up on the bed watching 
him. 

“You remember the other day when I spoke 
to you on the train,” David said, pushing the end 
of his mustache out of the way and screwing up 
the side of his face, “I told you that I some- 
times had hunches and that I always made a 
practice of following them?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Well, I Ve had another of those hunches ! ” 

“What is it?” 

Whitmore laid down his razor and turned 
around, presenting a grotesque appearance with 
one side of his face still covered with lather. 

“ Beecher! ” he announced. 

“What about him?” Dick asked. 

“None of us liked him from the first time we 
laid eyes on him,” Whitmore answered. “Our 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


46 

dislike was instinctive. The fellow did n’t really 
do anything out of the way at all. He was al- 
ways quiet, well behaved, respectful. I suppose 
if it hadn’t been for that business yesterday I 
should just have put the whole thing down to 
one of those dislikes that can’t be explained and 
thought no more about it. 

“ And that ’s the funniest part of it. His con- 
fession to us that he passed the final tests 
through sheer nerve and such smart guessing 
that it fooled those army doctors isn’t really 
anything that ought to count against him very 
heavily in your mind or mine. If you had 
told me you ’d done that thing, I ’d slap you on 
the back and tell you you were great. I ’d think 
it was nothing except your keenness to get in, and 
I ’d admire you for it. And you ’d feel the same 
way about me. 

“ But in Beecher I don’t like it.” 

“Neither do I,” Dick told him. “I’ve felt 
that way ever since he spoke to us on the street.” 

“You have, eh? I’m glad to hear it. That 
makes me feel surer that it isn’t just my imagina- 
tion playing tricks with me. Now we haven’t a 
single reason to suppose that Beecher has any 
other motives in taking these examinations than 
we have. If that fellow Norton had been as 
sharp as Beecher, he ’d have slipped through and 


THE SHADOWING OF BEECHER 47 

we ’d have admired him for it. You in any par- 
ticular hurry to get out of Chicago? ” 

“No,” answered Dick. 

“Then what do you say if we spend two or 
three days finding out all we can about this 
chap ? ” 

“I’m willing,” answered Dick. “And we 
might get Anson to help. His car might come in 
handy.” 

“ Good idea ! ” applauded the engineer. 
“We’ll get him on the ’phone in a jiffy and get 
to work right after breakfast. Of course this 
may be a wild-goose chase of the worst sort. 
We’ll probably find that Beecher’s the son of a 
Methodist minister in Iowa with a record like 
pure gold. But if I don’t follow this hunch of 
mine I ’ll be miserable, and it ’ll be a pleasant 
let-down after what we Ve just been through.” 

Shortly after breakfast the pair were in con- 
sultation with Stephen Anson, and, as they had 
expected, they found him more than willing to 
lend a hand in anything they had on foot. 

They began by pooling their information con- 
cerning Beecher, and found that it amounted to 
almost nothing. All of them had talked with 
him a little, but when they reviewed these con- 
versations they discovered that they had con- 
sisted mostly of answering Beecher’s questions. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


48 

He had told them nothing about himself. They 
did not know where he had come from, how long 
he had been in Chicago, what had induced him 
to try for the service, and what he had been 
doing with himself previously. Fortunately 
Whitmore remembered the name of the hotel 
at which he was staying. 

It was finally decided that Whitmore should 
go to Beecher’s hotel, see him, and try to draw 
him into conversation without arousing his sus- 
picions. Dick and Anson were to go back to 
the hotel, where Whitmore was to rejoin them. 
Afterwards they would meet, talk over what the 
engineer had learned, and then see if this infor- 
mation justified any further prosecution of their 
self-appointed investigations. 

Accordingly Dick and Anson went back to the 
hotel shortly before ten o’clock in the morning, 
Whitmore promising to be with them in time for 
lunch, perhaps earlier. The prospect of sitting 
around the hotel for a couple of hours did not 
seem inviting, so they drove along the Lake 
Shore Drive until after eleven, then returned to 
the hotel and inquired at the desk if there had 
been any telephone calls. The clerk told them 
no, and added, in answer to Anson’s second 
question, that Whitmore had not returned. 

They went up to Dick’s room and waited 


THE SHADOWING OF BEECHER 


49 


Until half-past one. Anson began to grow uneasy, 
but Dick would not listen to him. 

“We can trust Whitmore to take care of 
himself,” he insisted. “He’s staying for some 
good purpose, and he’ll be able to explain it 
when he comes back.” 

At two o’clock the engineer was still absent, 
and the others went down to the hotel dining- 
room for lunch, leaving word at the desk where 
they were to be found. It was nearly three when 
they came back into the lobby. Still no sign of 
Whitmore — and now Dick began to feel some- 
thing of Anson’s anxiety. 

“We might go down there and see what’s 
up,” proposed the latter. 

Dick held out for more time. 

“ Merely make Beecher suspicious if any- 
thing is wrong,” he pointed out. “ And I don’t 
see that we could do any good if we did get 
there.” 

At half-past four, however, Dick was ready to 
admit that Whitmore’s continued absence had a 
mighty queer look, and acceded to Anson’s pro- 
posal that they go at once to the hotel which 
Beecher had given as his address. 

They found the building without difficulty, a 
modest hotel on a side street, and went into the 
lobby. For a few minutes they strolled about 


50 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


through the lobby, writing-room, and billiard- 
room without seeing either Beecher or the en- 
gineer, then went to the desk and asked if a man 
named Beecher was registered there. 

“ Mr. Beecher was here,” answered the clerk, 
“but he left this morning.” 

“ When will he be back? ” Dick asked. 

“Did he go out alone?” Anson added in the 
same breath. 

“ Mr. Beecher checked out,” explained the 
clerk carelessly. “ As far as I know he has left 
the city.” 

The two stared at each other in blank as- 
tonishment; and Anson turned again to the 
clerk. 

“Would you mind looking again at your 
register to make sure?” he asked. “I don’t 
like to be troublesome, but it seems impossible 
that Mr. Beecher could have left the city when 
we had — an appointment to meet him.” 

The clerk glanced up, evidently on the point 
of being very short, but Stephen Anson was one 
of those good-natured men who can be persistent 
and inquisitive without getting disliked for it. 
The clerk obligingly spun the register around so- 
that Dick and Anson could read it and pointed 
with his pen. 

“ You can see for yourselves,” he said. “ Had 


THE SHADOWING OF BEECHER 51 

room 413, checked out at eleven-thirty this morn- 
ing.” 

“ Thanks,” answered Anson. “ Sorry to have 
troubled you.” 

He led Dick out of the lobby and then made 
a bee line for a side corridor and hurried down 
that till he came to a stairway. 

“Come on!” he called. “We’re going to 
have a look at 413. The chambermaids prob- 
ably haven’t been in it since it was vacated.” 

They had no trouble finding the room, which 
was an outside room in a side hall of the fourth 
floor. They passed no one on the way up except 
a servant on the third floor, and the corridor 
onto which room 413 opened was empty. Anson 
walked swiftly forward, Dick a few paces behind 
him, and tapped at the door. There was no 
response, and he tapped again. 

Dick had stopped a few paces away, and was 
suddenly startled to see Anson turn toward him 
a frightened face. 

“ Come here ! ” Anson said. 

Dick came up quickly. 

“Put your ear to the door!” begged Anson, 
“ and see if you hear anything.” 

Dick did so and gave vent to a startled ex- 
clamation. He could not tell precisely what it 
was he heard, but he knew that there was some- 


52 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


thing alive inside the room, something which 
had failed to respond to two knocks on the door 
which must have been perfectly audible ! 

It required very few seconds for the two men 
to get back to the desk. 

“There’s something wrong in room 413,” 
Anson said, breathless but quiet. “I don’t ask 
you to take my word for it. Just get one of 
your men and come find out for yourself.” 

An elevator carrying the two men, the clerk, 
and a burly hotel detective whisked them back 
to the fourth floor. The detective knocked at 
the locked door, bent his head to listen, then 
nodded significantly to the frightened clerk. 
Then he crossed the hall, hurled himself for- 
ward, and sent his full weight crashing against 
the door, which splintered and gave way. 

The four men rushed into the room, and the 
first thing that met their eyes was David Whit- 
more, lying on the bed bound, gagged, and 
struggling manfully against the ropes which held 
him ! 


CHAPTER VII 
Whitmore’s Story 

A few seconds later Whitmore was stretching 
his arms to restore the circulation, and feeling 
gingerly of the corners of his mouth which had 
been cruelly stretched by the gag, while the four 
men who had found him fired questions at him 
more rapidly than he could possibly answer 
them. 

As soon as he had recovered, the engineer 
began to laugh and at the same time reached 
into his pocket and drew out his purse. 

“What’s the damage?” he asked the clerk. 
“I’ll settle.” 

The four men looked at him in astonishment. 
The question seemed a strange one to come from 
a man who had just been the victim of an assault. 
But Whitmore continued to laugh, drew out sev% 
eral bills, and acted like a man thoroughly 
ashamed of what he had just done. 

“ I ’m old enough to know better than to do 
such things,” he confessed in a shamefaced man- 


54 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ner that Dick and Anson were at a loss to under- 
stand, “but I couldn’t resist the temptation. It 
looked like too easy a chance. What time is it, 
by the way? ” 

“ A little after five,” the clerk told him. 

Whitmore shook his head dolefully. 

“There goes ten dollars more! ” he mourned. 
“You see, Beecher and I had an argument. He 
bet me ten dollars that he could leave me tied 
and gagged here in the room and that I couldn’t 
get out inside three hours. I ’ve lost my bet ! ” 

The big detective glared at him. 

“ I ’ve a darned good notion to turn you over 
to the police for disorderly conduct,” he growled. 

“You can do that, of course,” Whitmore ad- 
mitted. “ But you don’t look like the sort of a 
chap who would.” 

Then for five minutes the engineer set about 
proving that his tongue was as skillful as his 
brain. At the end of that time the clerk and 
the house detective were laughing and stuffing 
crumpled bills into their pockets, while the 
three young men were on their way to the street. 

Whitmore maintained his air of shamefaced 
amusement until Anson’s car had whisked them 
several blocks from the hotel, then he drew a 
long breath and said: 

“Well, I’m glad to see that I can still tell a 


WHITMORE’S STORY 


55 


fairly convincing lie when one has to be told. My 
recent experience with our friend Beecher made 
me fear that I ’d forgotten how! ” 

“There wasn’t a word of truth in that rig- 
marole you told just now, was there?” Dick 
asked. 

“ Not a word ! ” admitted Whitmore. “Wait 
till we get to a place where we can talk and I ’ll 
tell you about it.” 

In their room at the hotel he told them the 
tale from start to finish, and they found the story 
so absorbing that there were no interruptions. 

“ I found Beecher easily enough,” he said, 
“but I must have gone about the business of 
pumping him clumsily, for I think I aroused 
his suspicions from the first. And anyhow, at 
that sort of game I was a child in his hands. 
Our friend Beecher isn’t the simple sort he 
seems! 

“We hadn’t been talking more than a few 
minutes when he suggested that we go up to his 
room. That suited my plans well enough, so we 
went up. There wasn’t a scrap of luggage in 
the room, and he explained that he ’d had it sent 
down, as he was going to leave the city to-day. 
We hadn’t been in the room more than a few 
minutes when the telephone rang and he an- 
swered it. 


56 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ ‘ I Ve got to step down to the office a minute,’ 
he said to me. ‘ Don’t mind waiting, do you? ’ 

“ So out he went, and that ’s about the last I 
know until a little while before you chaps came 
hammering at the door. I will just add that if 
Beecher ever offers you a cigar, don’t take it. 
I was smoking one of his cigars when he left 
the room. Apparently it was a mighty powerful 
weed, and by the time he came back into the 
room I was in such a state that he could do as 
he pleased with me — as you saw for yourselves.” 

“Where’s that cigar?” Anson demanded 
quickly. 

“ Oh, he saw to it that there was no trace of 
that,” Whitmore said. He cleaned up the traces 
absolutely, and there’s nothing but my story 
against his — and his sounds a whole lot more 
convincing.” 

“Then why,” Dick asked, “did you tell that 
whopper about a silly bet to the clerk and the 
? detective ? ” 

“Because,” explained Whitmore, “it didn’t 
strike me that this business was anything to get 
into the hands of the city police. I hadn’t 
enough on this man Beecher to succeed in doing 
anything but make myself ridiculous if I tried 
to get him. Any story I could tell would look 
mighty queer alongside the perfectly straight- 


WHITMORE’S STORY 57 

forward story he could put up, and he knew it. 
So it seemed to me the best plan to let him get 
clear.” 

“Then you aren’t going to try to do anything 
more?” Anson asked in a disappointed tone. 

Whitmore smiled grimly. 

“Have another guess!” he suggested. 

“It looks to me,” Dick said, “as though this 
is a matter for the secret service.” 

Whitmore laughed. 

“ It ’s in their hands,” he said. 

The other two looked at him uncertainly. 
Dick knew that there had not been an instant 
since they had unbound him in room 413 when 
Whitmore could possibly have communicated 
;with anybody. 

“You’ll understand now,” Whitmore went 
on, “ why I feel pretty sore over having Beecher, 
who is probably something much more danger- 
ous than he seems, put one over on me. You ’ll 
understand now, Allen, why I was so sure you 
were coming to Chicago to take the aviation 
tests, and why I seemed to know a little more 
than w T as natural about what was going on.” 

“You’re a secret service man yourself?” 

“Exactly.” 

“Then I don’t see how this fellow Beecher 
can get away from you or do any harm.” 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


53 

“As far as that goes,” answered Whitmore, 
“we can probably consider Beecher a scotched 
snake. He’s a marked man, of no further use 
to his employers. Sooner or later, of course, 
we ’ll get our hands on him. That ’s why, as you 
see, I ’m getting my things together and prepar- 
ing to shake the dust of Chicago from my heels.” 

He snapped shut the fastenings of a suitcase 
as he spoke, then turned to Dick. 

“You might let this be a lesson to you,” he 
said soberly. “This particular occurrence isn’t 
so serious in itself. Probably the only damage 
done is that the Imperial Government of Ger- 
many will know the details of our aviation tests. 
But the point is right here : Their spy system is 
everywhere. Their spies are picking up every 
scrap of information that can possibly be of the 
smallest service. Every man in America who 
possesses any bit of special information, or who 
has any small part in our armed forces, is a pos- 
sible target for their efforts. And the Ger- 
man spy isn’t a man with a furtive manner, a 
slouch hat, and an upturned mustache ; he ’s just 
as inconspicuous and harmless-looking as this 
Beecher. What’s more, he may not have a 
drop of German blood in his veins ! The thing 
for you to do is to be on your guard. In a few 
weeks now you’ll be taking your ground-school 


WHITMORE’S STORY 


59 

training. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes 
peeled for more of them! ” 

“ Do you suppose Beecher would have gone 
on if you hadn’t spotted him? ” Anson asked. 

“ To be sure he would,” answered Whitmore. 
“ He ’d have taken the whole course of training; 
probably gone to France if he could have done 
it. — And now, Stephen,” he went on, turning 
to Anson, “if that car of yours can get me to 
the Twelfth Street Station in ten minutes, I ’ll 
be grateful ! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 

School-Days Again 

Dick Allen was striding energetically along' 
one of the shaded streets of the little college 
town of Lakeville. A notebook and a couple of 
textbooks were under his arm, and but for the 
fact that he wore a uniform instead of the ordi- 
nary clothes of civilian life, the clock might have 
been turned back a few months and his college 
days resumed. 

As a matter of fact nearly three months had 
passed since the last day in Chicago with Stephen 
Anson after the sudden departure of Whitmore. 
They had been in many ways the strangest 
months of Dick’s life. He had been busy every 
instant. His family — consisting of his father, 
motherl and two younger brothers — had natu- 
rally been jealous of his time and had tried to 
keep him to themselves. 

But Dick had had certain things which he 
wanted to accomplish during the summer. In re- 
gard to two of them he had been open enough. 
He had spent many hours every week in a local 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 


6 1 


automobile factory, making himself as familiar 
as possible with the construction and operation 
of the ordinary gasoline engine. At first the 
workmen had somewhat resented his presence, 
as he was unpaid and had no actual duties, but 
once they learned the purpose of his frequent 
visits they had been only too willing to help him. 

In addition to the hours in the shop, Dick had 
given some time each day to keeping himself fit. 
He knew that passing the first examinations did 
not end his responsibility in this direction; that he 
had to keep in the best possible shape physically 
and had to do everything possible to strengthen 
the injured foot. He had heard of men who had 
“slipped through” the first tests (much after 
the fashion Beecher had employed) only to be 
thrown out on subsequent examinations, and 
when he thought of how near the broken arch 
had come to spoiling his chances, he shivered. 
So he spent a good deal of time walking and 
playing golf, but left his tennis-racket in its case, 
although the sight of white figures scampering 
about the courts was a constant temptation. 

But the third phase of his course of “self- 
training,” as he called it, was something which 
he kept secret even from the members of his 
household, and was practiced where nobody 
could see him. 


6 2 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Not for one instant had he forgotten the 
black fact that his fear of heights and his tend- 
ency to vertigo had not left him. Indeed — due 
probably to the amount of time he spent think- 
ing about such things — the old boyhood dream 
had returned, and on more than one night he 
had swung above a chasm at the end of a long 
rope. 

Two or three miles outside the little Middle- 
Western town which had been home to the Allen 
family for three generations, lay the rails and 
ties of an abandoned railroad. At one point the 
road crossed a ravine by a trestle, perhaps a 
hundred and fifty feet long and forty or fifty 
feet above the ground at its highest point. It 
had not been used for years, the woodwork 
;was badly rotted, and cautious people avoided 
crossing it. 

Dick did not score over his giddiness the 
stubborn triumph he had expected. At the end 
of the long weeks he had to confess to himself 
that it was about as unpleasant a task to cross 
the trestle as it had been the first time, and he 
was as far as ever from his secret hope of walk- 
ing across the very ends of the ties outside the 
.rails. 

A few days later had come his summons to 
the ground-school. But although Dick had been 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 


63 


a pretty conscientious student in college, he found 
that he really had no idea what hard work in 
classroom was like. Everything at Lakeville 
was so entirely different. 

The attitude of the classes differed from what 
Dick had known as much as did their appearance. 
The uniformed men on the benches were terribly 
intent upon their tasks. Each day consisted of 
only so many hours, and in those hours they had 
to perform the tasks that were set them. There 
was no thought of shirking. Let a man shirk 
one day, and he began to fall behind. And 
once a man lagged there was no mercy for him. 
No loafing, no hanging on the slender thread 
of “probation” now. 

Save for the fact that classes were held in the 
same rooms which had been doing duty for 
ordinary scholastic work, there was very little 
school flavor about the life : it was much closer to 
army life. The day began at five-thirty in the 
morning, the students went to “mess” instead 
of supper or dinner, and everybody was more 
than ready to tumble into bed when “taps” 
sounded at half-past nine. 

The first few weeks were devoted to what were 
known as “junior wing” studies, which con- 
sisted largely in giving the men a thorough 
grounding in the main principles of army dis- 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


6 4 

cipline and organization. They were given the 
same sort of drills, setting-up exercises, etc., that 
would have been the lot of recruits at any of the 
great army training-camps. 

During the twelve weeks which the course was 
to last the men had to be given instruction in 
construction and operation of engines, airplane 
construction, machine-gun, wireless, bombing, 
reconnaissance, aerial photography, theory of 
flight, night-flying, and the use of flares. Some 
of this was theoretical, much of it practical. 
And in addition to all these studies there was 
drill, drill, drill, some work on the machine-gun 
range, trap-shooting, and, as Dick began to 
think, inspections every other fifteen minutes. 

Only once in the course of the busy weeks did 
he particularly distinguish himself, and that was 
at the trap-shooting. The aviator must, of 
course, learn to shoot at moving objects while 
he himself is in motion, and the best possible 
preliminary practice for such work is shooting at 
fast-flying clay-pigeons with an ordinary shotgun. 

It happened that on the days when Dick went 
to the traps, he was almost the only man who had 
done much shooting. For any one new at the 
game, it is no simple matter to break with a 
charge of shot a clay saucer whirling off through 
the air at a swift rate. But Dick had broken 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 65 

hundreds of them, to say nothing of shooting 
ducks and snipe, which were far more difficult 
targets, and after a few minutes’ shooting he was 
told off by the instructor to assist in the training 
of the less experienced men. 

It was not until the long, hot weeks of the 
ground-school course were nearly completed, 
that the men were given work which had about 
it an air of grim reality, and gave them a real 
foretaste of what some of their work in the 
future would be like. This was the spotting- 
practice. 

In one of the large lecture-rooms a wooden 
scaffolding twelve or fifteen feet high had been 
erected in the center of the floor. Beneath it was 
a huge map on a large scale, showing woods, 
roads, towns, water-courses, and all the features 
of a landscape. Viewed from the seats on the 
top of the scaffolding, this map looked as an 
actual country-side would look to an aviator 
skimming above it at a height of about six 
thousand feet. 

One day when Dick took this work for the 
first time, he and some eight or ten other men 
seated themselves on benches at the top of the 
scaffolding, each man being provided with a wire- 
less apparatus and a small-scale map of the 
stretch of country spread out beneath him. Dick 


66 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


and the others were to play the parts of aviators, 
while another group of students grouped around 
the maps on the floor, and holding the receivers 
of the wireless outfits, were to impersonate 
artillery officers. 

By means of an electric apparatus worked by 
one of the instructors, tiny flashes of light were, 
made to appear on the maps. These were sup- 
posed to represent the bursting of shells, and the 
duty of the “ aviators” on their lofty perch was 
to spot these flashes upon the map, and send 
their information to the artillery officers below 
by means of the radios. 

Offhand it looked to Dick like an absurdly 
easy task, but within a very few minutes he 
became aware that it was anything but simple. 
He had to think of so many things at once, and 
to perform certain operations without fumbling 
or uncertainty. The flashes on the map were 
likely to show in any quarter and at any time; 
one section of the map looked confusingly like 
any other section, and you had to move and 
think quickly to identify positively the spot on 
which the miniature shell-burst had taken place, 
and send the information to the waiting officer 
of artillery on the floor below. 

“Great Scott! ” exclaimed the man next Dick 
during a momentary pause, “ the messages I ’ve 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 


67 


sent to my poor battery commander must look 
like a Chinese puzzle, and if he ’s followed my 
tips he must have sprayed the entire landscape 
with shells without hitting a single enemy gun! ” 

“Same here!” confessed Dick, glad to find 
that somebody else felt as thoroughly confused 
as he did. 

In those last few days Dick formed his first 
real intimacies. Four men were drawn close 
together in one of those sudden companionships 
destined to endure. Besides Dick there were 
Bob Holmquist, a tall, lank Texan with drawling 
speech and a general air of laziness not at all in 
keeping with his record in class and on the drill- 
ground; Dan Ericsson, a burly Minnesotan; and 
Ted Lane, a slim young fellow who had never 
before believed that much of the country was 
worth anything except New York City. 

There seemed little to draw the four men to- 
gether. They had led lives as different from 
each other as possible. Holmquist had spent 
his days on a ranch, Ericsson had been the son 
of a country storekeeper, Lane had led the care- 
free life of a wealthy New Yorker, and Dick 
the uneventful existence of a small Middle- 
Western city. 

An incident which had occurred a few days 
before the session closed helped to cement this 


68 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


comradeship and to give the quartette a name 
which was destined to stay with them on both 
sides of the Atlantic. 

All the men in the school had been taken out 
for a final round with the shotguns over the 
traps, and the officer who had been totaling the 
score-sheets looked up from his computations 
with a good-natured smile. 

“ Holmquist is high gun with forty-eight out 
of fifty,” he said, “with Lane, Ericsson, and 
Allen bunched for second with forty-six. A dis- 
tinct triumph for the ‘ Four Musketeers ’ ! ” 

And from that moment the “ Four Musket? 
eers” they became. The other men shouted it 
to them on the campus, and finally they adopted 
it for themselves, and even went to the length 
of assuming the names of Dumas’s famous four* 
— Holmquist’s long legs branding him Porthos* 
Ericsson’s broad shoulders and slow speech mak- 
ing him a perfect Athos, Lane being very obvi- 
ously Aramis, while Dick, in his own words, 
“had to be d’Artagnan, not because he was any 
great shakes at anything, but because there 
weren’t any other names left.” 

A few days later, along with* the rest of the 
men who had gone through the arduous work; 
of the ground-school and satisfied their instruc- 
tors that they would do, the Four Musketeers 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 


69 


stood about the station platform at Lakesville, 
waiting for the train that was to start them 
homeward for the brief leave which intervened 
between ground-school and the far more excit- 
ing beginning of actual flying-school. 

All of them were just beginning to realize 
what a splendid experience they had passed 
through. The work had been so hard and con- 
stant, the strain of responsibility so heavy, the 
chances for sitting back and taking a general 
survey of their own activities so few and far 
between, that none of them had really appre- 
ciated before what they had actually accom- 
plished. 

Ted Lane voiced the sentiments of all four as 
he leaned against a pile of baggage and spoke 
his mind. 

“ You know,” he said with more earnestness 
than he usually exhibited in talking about any-* 
thing, “all this has been great, really great! 
Why, I Ve really done more in these twelve 
weeks than in all the rest of my life ! When I 
stop and think of the amount of time I Ve wasted 
and the number of useless things I’ve done 
since I was a kid, I ’m ashamed of myself. 

“ And that does n’t mean just what I did before 
I took the air-tests either. Even after that I was 
something of a pup. I know after I passed the 


?o 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


tests I strutted around New York like a prize 
bull-pup ! I must have made an awful spectacle 
of myself! I think I had an idea that after the 
officers had had one look at wonderful me, 
they’d stick me right into a plane, and that in 
three months’ time I’d be back on Broadway, 
jingling with medals, covered with wounds that 
didn’t really bother me, but were very becoming, 
and with about a million dead Germans to my 
credit! You can laugh, but that isn’t as much 
exaggeration as it sounds. I was about that big 
a fool, and there are a whole lot more like me. 

“ But I want to go on record right here and 
now as saying that these twelve weeks have 
taught me just how big a thing the United States 
Army is, and what a miserable little worm is 
Theodore B. Lane, late of New York City! And 
yet I ’m whole lot more of a man than I was 
fourteen weeks ago. I insist on that point, be- 
cause I know now my real unimportance. And 
what ’s more, I ’m really of some use. I have 
given up all my ideas of being a brilliant 1 ace ’ 
and all that sort of thing. Probably I won’t be 
good enough to fly. But at least I know enough 
about engines so that they can ship me to some 
place where they ’re patching up old planes, and 
I can get in and work with any steam-fitter or 
mechanic on earth ! That ’s what gives me a new 


SCHOOL-DAYS AGAIN 


7i 

sort of cockiness that’s a whole lot better than 
the kind I Ve lost! ” 

“ Good talk, that ! ” approved the lanky Holm- 
quist, “ and I want to add a word. The Four 
Musketeers must stick together. What?” 

“Right!” agreed Ericsson. 

“Right!” echoed Ted and Dick in the same 
breath. 

“Then it’s agreed,” Holmquist said as they 
shook hands all around. “ Chances are we ’ll 
have to go to different flying-schools. We are n’t 
quite important enough yet to tell the War De- 
partment just where to send us and when to do 
it. It ’ll be some time yet before our wings are 
sprouted. But when they do, we fly together, 
eh?” 

A chorus of hearty approval greeted him, cut 
short by the hoarse whistle of the approaching 
train, which was to take Holmquist and Dick 
away, while Lane and Ericsson waited for a 
later one bound north. There was another 
round of hearty hand-grips, then the tall Texan 
swung himself up the steps of a Pullman and 
waved his hand. 

“The Four Musketeers separate,” he 
shouted, “to reassemble somewhere in France! ” 


CHAPTER IX 
Sprouting Wings \ 

In front of the steel hangars of the aviation 
field stood a row of waiting planes. All were 
of the “ tractor ” type used at the different train- 
ing camps — that is, the wooden propeller was 
at the front of the craft instead of at the rear; 
all of them had just come, trued and tightened, 
from the competent hands of the mechanics, and 
had been inspected by the officers. 

Groups of men, distinguished by close-fitting 
helmets and padded coats, began to cross the 
wide field toward the string of waiting aircraft. 
Other men stepped in front of the planes, 
seized and spun the big, two-bladed propellers, 
and instantly the powerful motors began to buzz 
and roar. 

One of these helmeted figures, following close 
at the heels of an instructor, was Dick Allen. 

It would be impossible to describe accurately 
his feelings as he strode across the dried grass 
of the field toward the line of waiting planes. 


SPROUTING WINGS 


73 


He knew that finally he was face to face with 
the supreme test for which he had been waiting 
all these months, which had hardly left his mind 
since the evening in Hamilton’s rooms at col- 
lege — he was actually going into the air! 

Lieutenant Sidmore, the instructor who was 
to take Dick into the air for the first time, ap- 
proached one of the machines, swept over it one 
glance that seemed to take in every detail, and 
turned to Dick. 

“ All right,” he said ; “ get in ! ” 

At Sidmore’s command Dick clambered swiftly 
to the front seat, settled himself in place, and 
buckled the life-belt which is as important to the 
aviator as the air-tube to the diver. The in- 
structor delayed a few moments, talking to one 
of the soldier-mechanics, then climbed to his 
place and signaled. The propeller was spun, the 
motor burst into life, and the airplane began 
slowly to trundle its way across the field. 

Now that the actual moment had come, it 
was not quite so bad as Dick had feared it would 
be. It was no longer a question of surrendering 
himself to unknown terrors. He knew pretty 
much what to expect. Day after day he had 
watched other planes in flight, he had talked with 
men who had been up, had heard them discuss 
their sensations, had even heard one man con- 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


74 

fess that he too had always known a fear of 
high places. 

But — and this thought tended to decrease 
the slight feeling of relief — he knew that Sid- 
more had a reputation for being merciless to 
beginners. It was the Lieutenant’s belief that if 
a man couldn’t stand all the dizzy tricks of an 
aeroplane on his first flight, he’d never do for 
a flyer, and that the thing might as well be proved 
on the first attempt. 

The plane bumped across the rough ground, 
acting very much like an automobile, nosing this 
way and that as Sidmore sought and finally 
found the direction of the wind. This maneu- 
vering along the ground was known, in the slang 
of the camp, as “taxi-ing,” being designed as a 
final test of the motor and other parts before 
leaving the earth. 

A bare minute of this (Sidmore always cut 
the preliminaries to a minimum), then the speed 
of the plane increased, it nosed up into the wind, 
the pilot pulled the “joy-stick” as the lever 
which operates the elevating-planes is called, and 
the machine took the air. 

For the space of several seconds — which 
seemed a much longer time — Allen was a very 
sick man. He did not feel as though he were 
flying, but that the aeroplane hung stationary in 


SPROUTING WINGS 


75 


the air and that the earth was falling swiftly 
away from him. The first sensation was not one 
of nausea, but the old, blind, helpless terror of his 
nightmares, the feeling that he was at the mercy 
of empty space and that nothing on earth could 
save him. He sat limp in the seat, incapable of 
motion, but kept his wits sufficiently to realize 
that it was futile to call out, that Sidmore could 
hear nothing above the steady roar of the motor. 

Like all the newer planes, Number Eight 
could climb without much loss of time, and the 
instructor went boring straight up at a sharp 
angle. Dick waited for fresh and worse sensa- 
tions as their height increased, only to find that 
they did not come, and that the first horrible 
fear was diminishing. Being as yet no judge of 
altitude, he had no idea how high they were, 
but he could see that Number Eight was still 
climbing. 

Sidmore climbed until he was well above three 
thousand feet — the altitude which is considered 
safe; that is, if anything goes wrong with the 
machine at such a height and it begins to fall, the 
chances are that the aviator will be able to regain 
control and make some sort of a landing instead 
of crashing helplessly down like a falling bird, 
as would probably happen if the trouble came 
at a lower level. 


76 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Once he had struck this safe level, he first put 
the plane on an even keel, then began coasting 
down a long, invisible slope through the air and 
shut off his motor. The sudden silence was as 
startling as an explosion would have been. 

“How do you feel?” demanded Sidmore. 

“All right,” Dick answered faintly. 

“Sick?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Don’t want to get out or go down or any- 
thing?” 

“No, sir.” 

“ All right. See how you like this ! ” 

Number Eight’s motor commenced again; the 
craft began to climb, straightened out, swung 
around in a long, sweeping turn, one wing rising, 
the other lowering as the pilot “banked,” pre- 
cisely as a cyclist or a skater leans his body in 
rounding a sharp turn, then suddenly lurched 
and shot sideways through the air. 

But for his life-belt Dick was sure that he 
would have been flung out of his seat, even 
though he had been expecting exactly this move. 
Sidmore had gone into a “side-slip” by tipping 
the plane up so sharply that it was now slipping 
edgewise through the air. 

Before Dick had more than caught his breath, 
they were skimming again on a level, then once 


SPROUTING WINGS 


77 


more climbing. Up, up, up, pointed the nose of 
the plane, then suddenly the visible world went 
quite crazy, the earth below shot overhead, van- 
ished — and they were dropping! Sidmore had 
given him his second degree by whirling through 
one of the dreaded “ loops.’’ 

For the next few minutes, Lieutenant Philip 
Sidmore thoroughly lived up to the reputation 
which he enjoyed among the student-aviators of 
the great camp. There was absolutely nothing 
in the way of an aerial stunt which he did not 
make the whirring, twisting Number Eight per- 
form. Loops, straight nose-dives, “tail spins,” 
“ side-slips ” — the whole bag of aviator’s tricks. 
He gave his passenger no chance to regain his 
self-control, but plunged him from one dizzy, 
breath-taking situation into another. 

When Sidmore thought he had set Number 
Eight through its fanciest paces for a sufficient 
length of time, he coasted again, shutting off his 
engine. 

“Had enough?” he demanded in a tone that 
carried no trace of pity. 

It was a few seconds before the dizzy, half- 
unnerved figure in the other seat could answer, 
but finally the victim of these twentieth-century 
tortures found his voice. 

“ Not if you think I ought to stand more,” he 


78 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

answered, summoning what shreds of spirit he 
had left. 

“ Oh, you have n’t had anywhere near 
enough,” Sidmore answered. “Been sick?” 

Dick could see no point in lessening the truth. 

“Sickest I ever was — or want to be!” he 
answered. 

He thought he heard the Lieutenant chuckle. 
The next moment the motor was again in motion 
and they were boring to greater heights. Dick 
rallied his badly mauled nerves for another 
ordeal, but nothing happened for a time. The 
plane crept up for more than a thousand feet; 
then once more came that clear, intense silence. 
To Dick’s ears came very faintly the drone of 
another motor, and he caught a glimpse of 
another plane, lower down and a couple of miles 
away. 

“Take the controls and run her,” ordered 
Sidmore. 

For an instant Dick could not believe that he 
had understood aright. Of course he was per- 
fectly familiar with the theory of controlling and 
driving a plane, but he had expected that he 
would fly many times with an instructor before 
being allowed to handle “the stick” himself. 

As Dick’s fingers closed on the lever he felt 
as he had on the day when he fired his father’s 


SPROUTING WINGS 


79 

heavy shotgun for the first time. There was a 
thrill in it, a delight in doing the thing which 
hitherto he had always watched somebody else do. 

Within a few seconds of the time Dick Allen 
took the controls of Number Eight, Sidmore 
knew that his pupil had passed the acid test 
which he had given. Dick’s tendency was to do 
the right thing instead of the wrong one with 
rudder and elevators. 

“Now you start taking her down,” Sidmore 
called, shutting the motor off so that he could 
speak. “ When I jerk the stick, you let me have 
her.” 

Dick began coming down in long, slow spirals. 
As he started, he began searching the earth for 
signs of the aviation-field. Since they had started 
into the air, he had hardly looked down, being 
altogether too completely occupied with his own 
bodily sensations. What he saw now as he 
looked down was a meaningless expanse of 
brown and green, slashed in places by the yellow- 
brown streaks of roads, the wriggling, silver 
lines of water-courses and the darker masses 
which he knew were towns. There was nothing 
to give him his bearings. He glanced at the com- 
pass, then at the altitude-gauge, and started 
down in what he guessed to be the right direc- 
tion. 


8o 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Never in his life had he tasted such a sense 
of complete mastery. He had driven motor- 
cycles, autos, ice-boats, but never anything like 
this. He felt that he could send Number Eight 
anywhere, make it do anything; that the guiding 
force of the machine was not the roaring motor 
behind him, but his own will. His recent fears, 
the deadly sickness he had experienced during 
Sidmore’s wild tumblings, were past and forgot- 
ten. It was with a distinct regret and unspoken 
protest that he felt the Lieutenant’s command- 
ing jerk on the stick and relinquished the con- 
trols. 

In no time at all they were circling over the 
field, and under Sidmore’s skillful hand they 
sloped down, swung along just above the earth, 
and finally came down as lightly and easily as a 
bird. 

It happened that Number Eight finally stopped 
not many yards from a group of officers and 
cadets who were standing about another plane. 
Dick, still glowing from his recent experience, 
unbuckled his life-belt, climbed out of his seat, 
dropped to the ground — and then it happened! 

No sooner was the solid earth under his feet 
than he became deadly sick. No unhappy voy- 
ager on his first passage of the English Channel 
was ever worse off ! And even while he suffered, 


SPROUTING WINGS 


Dick felt sure that he was completing his own 
ruin, that after such an exhibition his career as a 
flyer would be cut short. 

When he finally recovered, he turned to see 
Sidmore grinning at him without much sympathy. 

“ Feel better now?” inquired the officer. 

Dick could only stare at him with a woe- 
begone and despairing face, and the instructor 
was moved to pity. 

“Oh, don’t let a little thing like that worry 
you,” he advised curtly. “ Done it myself time 
and again. Anybody ’s likely to any time. I ’ll 
make a flyer out of you sure as spark-plugs ! ” 

And Dick fairly staggered off toward his 
quarters, still rather shaky in the legs, but buoyed 
up by the most complete feeling of happiness that 
he had experienced in many months. The ter- 
rors of the old nightmares, of the long hours 
he had spent trying to walk the abandoned rail- 
road trestle, were forgotten — he had learned 
to fly! 


CHAPTER X 

The Hovering Shadow 

If the work at the ground-school had been ex- 
hausting, that at the flying-field was trying in 
another way. The cadets were kept at the same 
high tension: there was always a chance that 
flaws might appear in a man’s work which meant 
the end of his service. They were subjected to 
even more rigorous drill and discipline. And 
there was now added the element of danger. 
From the instant a man buckled himself into his 
seat until he climbed out of the machine upon 
descending from the air, he was what insurance 
companies would call “ a poor risk.” 

Hardly a day passed without accidents of 
some sort, most of them of a minor nature. The 
“boneyard,” where were kept the smashed and 
injured planes, was always well stocked, the 
hospital always had a generous quota of injured 
men. And these accidents could not help having 
an effect upon the other men. 

There were three of the “ Four Musketeers ” 
in the camp, Dick, Lane, and Ericsson, Holm- 


THE HOVERING SHADOW 83 


quist having been stationed elsewhere, and the 
three were together a good deal of the time 
when off duty. 

From the very first the burly Northerner and 
the slim product of Broadway had given promise 
of making two of the best flyers in camp. As 
different from each other as day and night, 
they had already attracted the attention of the 
other cadets and won the favorable comments 
of the officers. As might have been expected, 
Lane was daring, almost reckless, afraid of 
nothing, seemingly leaving everything to blind 
chance, and yet always coming through un- 
damaged where other men might have crashed 
to a fall. Ericsson had been much slower to 
learn, never seemed to take chances of any sort, 
attempted nothing showy in his flying, and 
always got results. He could be depended upon 
to carry out orders. 

“Our friend Athos,” Ted said to Dick, “is 
going to win fame, you see if he doesn’t! ” 

The two men were returning, greasy and 
dusty, from the machine-gun range, and a plane 
which they recognized as Ericsson’s had just 
taken the air. 

“Athos,” Ted went on, making use of the 
nickname Holmquist had conferred upon the 
Minnesotan, “ is going to be a whale on recon- 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


84 

naissance work. He always plays with a wide 
margin of safety, and he ’s got a mind like trac- 
ing-paper! Let him fly over a section of the 
front and he’d come back with a clear picture 
of it in his brain and never a shot fired at him.” 

They separated, Dick going to his quarters, 
while Ted turned toward the hangars where he 
was to go up. Dick had some free time and was 
loitering about, writing letters. After a time he 
went out to mail them at the nearest “Y” hut. 
On the way he met Ericsson. He was standing 
still in the middle of the road watching the 
evolutions of a plane which was a mere speck 
in the afternoon sky. 

“ He ’ll get one awful panning when he comes 
down ! ” Ericsson said. 

“ Who is it, Ted?” Dick asked. 

“ Of course ! He ’s been doing stunts for the 
last ten minutes. He ’s crazy. The C. O. won’t 
stand for all these stunts without orders. He ’ll 
get thirty days ‘ C. B,’ if he doesn’t get some- 
thing worse ! ” 

“ You mean a fall? ” 

“Just that.” 

Dick shook his head. 

“Ted’s too lucky and too sure of himself,” 
he said. “ He ’ll be the last man in the world to 
fall.” 


THE HOVERING SHADOW 85 

“ He may be lucky,” Ericsson answered 
soberly, “ and he may have all the skill in the 
world, but you can’t defy the laws of nature and 
get away with it.” 

Something made them stand and watch instead 
of going on, although there was nothing at all 
unusual about the sight of a plane looping and 
diving in the skies. While they watched, the 
plane went into a “ tail-spin.” 

“Bit low for that stuff,” muttered Ericsson. 

An aeroplane, diving nose foremost toward 
the earth, frequently begins that strange motion 
which the airmen have dubbed “ tail-spin.” In 
it the nose of the craft, being much the heavier 
end, swings in quite a circle, while the tail spins 
about in smaller circles. Owing to the position 
of the machine, the elevating-planes cease to 
exert their usual effect and become the rudder, 
so that the plane is temporarily out of control. 
If left to itself it will ordinarily straighten out 
into a direct “ nose-dive,” and the pilot can then 
regain complete control. So a tail-spin, if it 
happens at a sufficient height, is nothing very 
serious, but if it starts at an altitude so low that 
the falling machine has no chance to straighten 
out, a crash is sure to follow. 

Ericsson’s quick eye had noted the fact that 
Lane’s machine, Number Seventeen, was dan- 


86 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


gerously low when the spin commenced. Their 
interest changed to concern as the spin continued 
and the craft shot earthward; then Ericsson 
turned to Dick with a face gone suddenly white. 

“ My Lord, Dick!” he exclaimed, “Ted’s 
falling! It’s got away from him!” 

Without another word both men started 
running full speed for the field. Already auto- 
mobiles filled with officers and men and a lum- 
bering ambulance had started toward the point 
at which the tumbling plane had vanished. The 
two were in time to swing up on the rear 
end of a big truck, whose sinister business was 
to bring back the wreckage of the fallen plane 
— for nothing can be allowed to go to waste. 
Men on motor-cycles (every plane is, of course, 
watched while in the air for exactly this sort 
of accident) had already gone on ahead. 

A swift drive of a couple of miles — which 
passed in complete silence — brought them to 
the edge of a field of corn on the side of a hill. 
Knots of khaki figures were moving about, and 
at the far side of the field there was a big huddle 
of them about a spot where one wing of the 
fallen plane stuck up into the air. The big am- 
bulance was already bumping across the field 
toward them. 

At the gate they met a cadet named Holmes 


THE HOVERING SHADOW 87 

out of their own squadron. He was crying and 
made no attempt to hide the fact. He nodded 
when they put the dreaded question. 

“ Engine fell square on him,” he said shortly. 
Dick and Ericsson went no farther, but turned 
around and started slowly back toward the field. 
Finally Ericsson broke the hard silence. 

“Ted’s gone!” he said. “It’s hard to real- 
ize: you don’t think of his kind as going over. 
The i Four Musketeers ’ are only three now, and 
he was the best of us. He would have done 
things, that man! Well, it just means that we 
three who are left have got to do that much 
more ! ” 


CHAPTER XI 

The Claws of the Eagles 

Had Ted Lane met his tragic fate under the or- 
dinary conditions of civilian life, the occurrence 
would have continued for days the one topic 
of conversation; the men who had known him 
intimately would have been able to talk and 
think of little else. But the conditions were far 
from ordinary. The officers and men in the 
great aviation camp were just as much engrossed 
by the work which held them from dawn till 
dark every day as their companions in arms who 
were actually at the front. Danger, injuries, the 
sudden snuffing-out of men whom they had seen 
and talked with a few hours before — these 
things had become almost familiar happenings. 
They literally had no time to think about them. 

With the passing of every day the work 
became more exacting, more important. The 
brood of war-eagles which had been hatched out 
under the watchful eyes of the officers, had 
learned to fly with help, were fast learning to 


THE CLAWS OF THE EAGLES 89 

fly alone. The time had come for them to be 
taught the other matters which they would have 
to know before they were entirely ready for the 
work overseas. Merely keeping an aeroplane 
right side up in flight was by no means all that 
the cadets had to learn. 

They had, first, to be just as thorough and 
efficient mechanics as the enlisted men who did 
not actually fly, and whose business it was to 
keep the machines in perfect running order. 

Secondly, they had to learn the trick of pick- 
ing out swiftly and unerringly significant details 
in the landscape hundreds or thousands of feet 
beneath them, identifying these landmarks on 
maps and so establishing their own positions. 
And closely coupled with this work was further 
and more detailed practice in aerial photography. 

As the days passed and this man or that de- 
veloped aptitude in any particular direction, his 
training became intensified along special lines. 
Some men were evidently fitted for handling the 
small, swift battle-planes; others showed marked 
ability in the way of reconnaissance work; still 
others seemed best adapted for duty in the huge, 
slower-moving planes designed for bombing. 
Some men were at their best (clear-headed, un- 
troubled by nerves, untouched by “ air sickness ”) 
when the controls of the plane were actually in 


9 o 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


their hands, while others were uneasy when 
actually handling “the stick,” but keen, ob- 
servant, steady, when relieved of this responsi- 
bility. Very evidently the first class would make 
the best pilots, while the others would serve 
better as observers. 

On more than one occasion Dick had acci- 
dents. Once, returning at night from a trial 
flight, his engine overheated. Glancing back 
over his shoulder he could see the glow of red- 
hot metal. For an instant fear gripped him, and 
his hand fairly stiffened on the controls. There 
was the danger that the engine might “ freeze ” 
• — that is, become so thoroughly overheated as to 
stop running, leaving him helpless hundreds of 
feet in the air, with no choice but to make a land- 
ing in the darkness, where he might just as well 
land on the spire of a church as in an open field! 
On the other hand, he knew that much depended 
upon the success of the trial-trip. A certain task 
had been set him: he had been told to fly to a 
certain town, land, take the air again, and fly 
back, the round trip to be completed within a 
certain number of hours. If he landed now — 
even supposing that he could land safely on the 
black earth beneath him — it meant that he could 
not possibly get back to camp within his time 
allowance. 


THE CLAWS OF THE EAGLES 91 

His hesitation was only momentary. He set 
his teeth grimly and flew for camp. 

He kept his back to the red-hot metal, glow- 
ing sinister and threatening behind him, and 
bored his way through the darkness toward 
camp. And nothing had ever looked as good 
to him as the lights of the aviation field ! 

Later Dick had a rather unpleasant few min- 
utes with the Commanding Officer. He had 
made his trip on schedule time, but he had 
brought back a motor that was worth little but 
a trip to the scrap-heap. Dick stood in front of 
the sharp-eyed, hard-faced, but eminently just 
Major and answered questions— questions which 
ten months earlier would have sounded like so 
much Greek. 

There were just two possible explanations of 
the engine-trouble. Either Dick had made a 
mistake or the mechanic who had certified to 
the perfect running condition of the motor had 
made one. 

“ One or the other of you has made a mistake, 
a costly mistake,” the Major said crisply. “ For- 
tunately, Allen, your record is peculiarly free 
from mistakes of this sort. That’s all. You 
may go.” 

Dick saluted, then hesitated. 

“ Well, what is it?” 


92 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ If you please, sir,” Dick asked, “ could I be 
relieved from duty to-morrow and put in the day 
overhauling that motor?” 

He received the necessary permission, and the 
next day was grimy, greasy, but ultimately 
crowned with success. The trouble appeared to 
have been a cracked bearing. This might have 
been due to a flaw in the metal, might have been 
due to hasty and careless inspection on the part 
of a mechanic anxious to get through with a 
job. Dick happened to know the mechanic who 
was responsible — a man named Doughty who 
seemed a hard-working, conscientious chap. So 
Dick, little guessing how much hung on the 
decision, merely reported a flawed bearing, 
and the mechanic Doughty did not go “up on the 
carpet.” Neither, by the way, did Dick’s record 
lose anything through the occurrence. 

He had other adventures, some of them amus- 
ing, some of them quite the opposite. But not un- 
til the eagles had commenced to use their claws, 
and the cadets had really entered upon the last 
stage of their training, did he have the adventure 
which was near to costing him his life, and which 
was destined to have strange connection with 
events which had gone before and others which 
were to follow. 


CHAPTER XII 
The Long Arm 

By the spring following Dick’s entrance as a 
cadet at the flying-school, the status of the men 
still in the various squadrons was pretty thor- 
oughly established. At that late date there was 
little or no chance that a man would be thrown 
out. Not only were the men pretty well proved 
along general lines, but their skill for special 
work was well established. 

Ericsson, for example, would be wasted if he 
were not put in a Spad or Nieuport battle-plane 
and set to dueling with the Fokkers above the 
fields of France. The big man from Minne- 
sota was not a particularly daring or skillful 
flyer, though, as has been said, he was sure and 
steady, but he was a deadly shot. He had proved 
himself just as good with a Lewis machine-gun 
as with rifle, revolver, or shotgun. 

In the ground-school the men had been given 
plenty of work on the machine-gun range, and 
there had been more of this in the flying-school. 


94 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Then they had been given work with the guns 
mounted on the planes. Instead of being 
mounted close to the seat of the pilot, the gun 
is mounted on the top of the plane. Moreover, 
it is lashed fast. When the aviator wants to 
shoot at anything he aims not his gun, but the 
plane itself ! 

At first this seems a most difficult perform- 
ance, but experience has proved that much 
more rapid and accurate shooting can be done 
this way than from a gun mounted on an ordi- 
nary carriage, and capable of being elevated, de- 
pressed, and trained from side to side. 

In all machines of the battle-plane order, the 
“tractor” type — that is, the plane having the 
propeller in front — prevails. Obviously if the 
machine-gun is back of the propeller, the stream 
of steel-jacketed bullets will have to pass through 
the whirling blades, and if their passage were 
not adjusted somehow, the wooden blades would 
soon be splintered, and the plane wrecked by its 
own gun-fire. 

This danger has been done away with by what 
is known as “synchronizing the guns.” This 
means that the whirling of the propeller and 
the fire of the gun are timed and mechanically 
controlled so that the stream of bullets passes 
through the whirling propeller without touching 


THE LONG ARM 


95 

a blade. The airman doesn’t have to give this 
matter a thought: it takes care of itself. 

The first aerial target-shooting was done in 
a manner at once spectacular and effective. A 
number of toy balloons, similiar to those sold 
at fairs and circuses, but considerably larger, 
were released from the ground, and the cadets 
had gone after them with their rattling Lewises. 

At first there had been a good deal of wild 
work, and a vast majority of the balloons had 
escaped undamaged. Indeed, some of the best 
flyers, and even men who had done well with the 
guns on the ground, had found it almost impossi- 
ble to repeat their good work at this new game. 

Not so Ericsson. Of course he did not hit 
every balloon, but his percentage of hits was 
much higher than that of any of the others, and 
sufficiently high to bring smiles of satisfaction to 
the faces of the older officers — and expressions 
of envy to those of some of the younger ones. 

Following the balloon work came further 
practice of a far more exciting nature. In this 
work two planes were sent into the air at once. 
One of them carried the marksman; the other 
had attached to its tail paper streamers some two 
hundred feet in length. The target-carrying 
machine was the faster, and as it passed the 
other the pilot ripped off as many shots as he 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


9 6 

could at the paper streamers before they were 
out of range. 

Dick, who had proved a fair but by no means 
unusual shot, had been called upon for frequent 
service in the target machines. He rather liked 
the excitement and hazard of it when he knew 
who the man in the other plane was and had 
confidence in his shooting, but when some of the 
wild ones were at work it was anything but 
pleasant. Time after time he had heard the 
whine of their bullets above the roar of his 
motor, and on two or three occasions the wings 
of his plane had been struck. 

It was on one of these flights that he had his 
first fall, followed by the strange events already 
mentioned. 

He had gone up in a plane with another cadet 
named Clark, a somewhat erratic but pretty 
dependable flyer, who usually was most to be 
trusted when there was risky business afoot. 
The machine had dual controls, but Clark was 
doing the piloting, Dick’s job being to keep 
an eye to the streamer-target, otherwise to be 
merely a passenger. And when two cadet-flyers 
are in the same machine, the rigid rule is that one 
man is to handle the controls, while the other is 
to keep his hands off them entirely. 

The actual practice had been finished and 


THE LONG ARM 


97 


Clark had just announced that they’d go for a 
“bit of a joy-ride” before heading down to the 
field. There was nothing out of the way about 
this, and Dick settled back in his seat thoroughly 
to enjoy himself. 

Presently, as Clark banked a little too sharply 
on a turn, Dick felt the peculiar slurring, drop- 
ping motion that told of a side-slip. He made 
an instinctive reach for the controls, then remem- 
bered that Clark was responsible, that his own 
interference would only make matters worse, 
and let them alone. 

But it was very soon evident that it was n’t a 
mere side-slip. Clark didn’t recover control as 
soon or as completely as he should have done, 
and it was evident that he was n’t going to. His 
attempts to pull up the plunging plane were 
futile. They weren’t falling straight, but were 
zig-zagging down — and Dick saw that they 
were now a scant four hundred feet in the air 1 

The same glance, however, showed him that 
one thing was in their favor. They were going 
to fall : that was certain. But at least they were 
going to fall into water instead of onto land, 
for Dick saw beneath them the broad, shallow 
waters of a bayou over which he had flown 
many times, and whose brackish waters he had 
explored on a couple of swimming parties. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


> 

Clark kept his head, stuck to the controls, 
managed to keep the plane on its veering course 
and away from the deadly straight plunge, and 
finally slid it into the water at an angle, as one 
might slide the blade of a knife into a roll of 
butter. 

There was a tremendous splash, a huge hiss- 
ing of steam as the hot engine plunged into the 
water, a tearing, cracking, and snapping from 
the damaged wing, and a shock which gave both 
men a savage wrench, but, thanks to their life- 
belts and the nature of the tumble, did nothing 
more serious. Within a few seconds both men 
were free and splashing about in the muddy 
water. 

“ Hurt? ” called Clark. 

“No,” answered Dick. “Are you?” 

“Not a scratch!” Clark said almost ruefully. 
“But, holy smoke, haven’t I made junk of 
her?” 

“You’ve pretty well done that,” admitted 
Dick. “What happened?” 

“You can search me!” Clark said soberly. 
“I’ve driven this boat no end of times, and 
never had her play this sort of trick on me 
before ! ” 

He looked at the wreck thoughtfully. 

“Can’t we push her ashore?” he asked. 



u T here was a tremendous splash ” 










♦ 


















» 














































X 








THE LONG ARM 


99 

“Have a try,” answered Dick; and they set 
to work. 

It proved a fairly easy but rather lengthy task, 
as the plane was some hundreds of feet from 
shore, but in the course of time they ran it out 
on the beach. Then Clark began going over it 
inch by inch, strut by strut, screw by screw, 
Dick watching him. 

“See here, Allen,” he said finally. “The 
stick jams.” 

“It’s the way she rests, isn’t it?” Dick asked. 

“No, the elevators are free enough. Of course 
that spill might have jammed it — might have 
done anything, for that matter — but I’ll take 
my oath that the stick jammed just now when I 
tried to pull her up after she side-slipped! ” 

“ Bothered you any before? ” 

“ Never before to-day. I noticed a while back 
that it seemed sort of logy, but didn’t think any- 
thing of it.” 

“ Happen to know who had the last look at 
her — among the mechanics, I mean?” 

“Doughty,” answered Clark. “Why?” 

“Well, that’s queer,” explained Dick, and 
related the affair of the cracked bearing. 

“ Queer business,” admitted Clark when Dick 
had finished, “but Doughty’s a harmless, in- 
offensive-looking fellow.” 


IOO 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ So was the chap named Beecher that I ran 
foul of in Chicago,” answered Dick, and told 
that story as well. “No use talking, Clark, 
those chaps have a mighty long arm, and they 
hide it mighty well! ” 

Clark sat for a time lost in thought while 
Dick waited. It was Clark’s affair: it was up 
to him to handle it. 

“I hate to get laughed at worse than any- 
thing on earth,” Clark said finally, “and we 
stand a mighty good chance of getting just that 
if we go nosing into things. If we take this story 

— which may be just coincidence and guesswork 

— to Captain Blake or the Major — I wouldn’t 
consider any of the others — it’s likely to get 
out. What do you say if we do our own nos- 
ing? n 

“And tell nobody?” 

“Just that.” 

“ It’s up to you, Clark.” 

“Then I say we’ll do it. Of course, if we 
take to prowling, some fool sentry may go crazy 
and blow a hole in us, but things are awful dull 
anyhow lately. What do you say?” 

Dick hesitated an instant, then yielded. 

“I’ll go you — in moderation,” he agreed, 
and they started on a hike for the nearest tele- 
phone. 


THE LONG ARM iol 

At Dick’s suggestion they did nothing at all 
rash, put themselves in no positions which they 
could not explain. Dick felt a little foolish 
about the whole business, a little inclined to wish 
that they had gone straight to the Major or Cap- 
tain Blake with the tale of their suspicions. He 
knew how rigidly the planes were inspected, 
and how these inspections were checked, cross- 
checked, and carded. He knew, too, how well 
the machines were guarded in their hangars. It 
seemed impossible that any one could have tam- 
pered with one of them. 

Then he remembered the affair of Beecher 
and Whitmore’s warning speech afterward. 

He was tempted to take Ericsson into his 
confidence, having great faith in his sober judg- 
ment, but he obeyed Clark literally and kept still. 

At first they limited themselves to watching 
the mechanic Doughty, asking questions among 
the other men, finding nothing for their pains. 
There appeared to have been no other suspicious 
affairs, and it was impossible to find anything 
against Doughty. He was a skillful workman, 
and had been a good soldier before his transfer 
to aviation. 

Dick was for giving up their efforts and for- 
getting their suspicions, but Clark was stubborn. 

“Let’s wait two or three days,” he begged; 


102 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ If we don’t uncover anything by that time, I ’m 
willing to admit we were wrong. I happen to know 
there ’s a fresh shipment of machines coming in 
to-morrow or next day. If anything’s going to 
happen, there ’s a chance for it. I ’ve watched 
for three nights now.” 

“ The deuce you have ! ” exclaimed Dick. 
“Where?” 

“ Down by the hangars. It ’s no trick to slip 
out of barracks and get back in. But I ’m getting 
mighty short of sleep. Take the trick to-night, 
will you? ” 

Against his better judgment, Dick agreed, and 
about eleven o’clock that night he climbed out 
of bed, picked up his shoes, and slipped out of 
barracks without any trouble. Long experience 
had made him thoroughly familiar with the ar- 
rangement of posting the sentries and the times 
of relieving them. He had no trouble in making 
his way to the new steel hangars in which the 
partially unpacked parts of the new planes had 
been stored, and in concealing himself in a pile 
of packing-cases. 

Then he spent nearly four hours in alternately 
calling himself a fool, starting at every shadow, 
and shivering in the chill night air. He made up 
his mind in advance to quit his useless vigil at 
three o’clock. At a quarter of three he decided 


THE LONG ARM 


103 

that the extra fifteen minutes were better spent 
in bed. 

Before leaving he took one more look along 
the row of hangars, dim and ghostly in the faint 
light/ He was just about to turn away and begin 
his cautious course back to the barracks, when 
he bit his lips to check an exclamation, and froze 
to immobility. 

From the hangar nearest him — where no 
sentry should have been at that particular hour 
— a blacker shadow had for an instant detached 
itself, moved cautiously forward, and then van- 
ished in the deep shadow thrown by the hangar ! 


CHAPTER XIII 

The Man in the Hangar 

Dick's first impulse was to leave his place of 
concealment and rush forward, but he checked 
this instinctive movement and hesitated. He was 
unarmed, and would not have dared use weapons 
had he possessed them. He was without author- 
ity — indeed, until the case against the shadowy 
figure he had seen was proved, he was just as 
much an object of suspicion as Doughty — if 
the prowler was Doughty. He was out of bar- 
racks without permission, lurking about a part 
of the camp where he had no business without 
orders. A sentry would have been as much 
justified in firing upon him as he would upon the 
other man. 

While these thoughts were tormenting him, 
Dick kept his eye upon the hangar, watching for 
the reappearance of the dark figure. He saw 
nothing, and the place continued so silent that 
he began to think that his eyes had played a 
trick on him and that he had really seen nothing. 
The chain of sentries was so close to him that 


THE MAN IN THE HANGAR 105 

he could hear the tramping feet of two of them, 
and the clank of metal as one of the pacing 
figures shifted his rifle from one shoulder to the 
other. 

At this moment there reached his ears the 
sound of a faint tapping inside the hangar, and 
he thought he saw the flash of an electric torch. 
At the same moment he decided upon his own 
course of action. 

The faint tapping meant that the man was 
doing something to injure the planes, and 
Doughty was clever enough mechanic so that 
he could injure them seriously without leaving 
traces which would betray the fact. If it was n’t 
Doughty, but some other man who had every 
right to be there, he could find out by edging 
closer, then waste no time in getting back to 
barracks. 

Once his mind was made up he lost no time in 
putting his plan into execution. Keeping as 
much in the shadow as possible he began work- 
ing his way forward toward the shadowy out- 
lines of the hangar, pausing from time to time 
to assure himself that the man inside was still 
working, and that none of the sentries were 
close enough to be attracted by the slight sounds 
he was making. 

The entire distance he had to cover was hardly 


10 6 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

more than seventy-five feet, and he was already 
more than halfway across, keeping himself in 
the shadows and bending almost double, when 
his ear caught a new sound. He listened an 
instant, then muttered an exclamation of thank- 
fulness that he had stopped frequently to listen 
instead of crossing the space between his hiding- 
place and the hangar in one rush. 

Somewhere near him, invisible as yet in the 
darkness, but evidently coming nearer every 
second, a group of several men was moving 
toward him! The sound of their boots on the 
hard ground was distinctly audible, so distinct, 
in fact, that Dick had no difficulty in deter- 
mining the direction from which they were ap- 
proaching. 

Flight, and that without waste of time, seemed 
to be the one course open to him, but, as he still 
hesitated and the sound of approaching footsteps 
was drawing steadily nearer, matters were taken 
out of his hands in startling fashion. 

Either the sounds had reached the ears of the 
man in the hangar, or he had interrupted his 
own work at frequent intervals to listen. Now, 
almost without warning, a figure suddenly ap- 
peared, paused for an instant, then came straight 
toward him, breaking at once into a long-strid- 
ing, noiseless run. 


THE MAN IN THE HANGAR 107 

This time Dick did not take the time to weigh 
his own chances against the necessity of the 
moment. The fact that the man in the hangar 
was running away was a sufficient confession of 
guilt, and as the dark figure bore down on him, 
Dick dived for his legs as the defensive full-back 
plunges for the man with the ball in the open 
field. 

Taken absolutely by surprise and unprepared 
for such an attack, the flying figure went down 
under the force of Dick’s tackle as though he 
had been struck by a six-inch shell, and both of 
them fell so heavily that for a moment they lay 
without moving. But the captive, his nerves on 
edge from the dangerous business on which he 
had just been employed and the fear under which 
he had been working, let out a wild yell as Dick’s 
arms closed round him — a yell that must have 
carried to every part of the camp in the stillness 
of the night. 

Still somewhat dazed by his fall, Dick was 
conscious of being jerked to his feet, of the blind- 
ing flash of a light in his face, then sharp orders, 
and rough hands were pushing him off through 
the darkness. 

His captors had assumed that both their pris- 
oners were of the same stripe — they had seized 
both Doughty and himself! 


io8 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

“ I say,” he burst out, “ what are you doing 
with me ? It ’s the other man you want ! ” 

“Always is,” answered the man at his side. 
“ If I were you I ’d keep still. I guess you ’ll 
get plenty of chance to talk before long! ” 

Dick started to protest further, then stopped. 
At the moment the best thing for him to do was 
to take the soldier’s advice and hold his tongue. 
He had the prospect of a night in the guard- 
house, no pleasant thing in itself, and to-morrow 
he would have to make explanations. But that 
would be easy enough. Clark would support 
his statements readily enough. And yet, a night 
in the guard-house — ! 

“Can’t I speak to the Major or Captain 
Blake ? ” he asked eagerly. 

“ More ’n you ’ll want, to-morrow ! ” the man 
at his side promised grimly. 

A walk of a few minutes brought them to the 
square building behind the high, closely strung, 
barbed-wire fence, above whose doorway burned 
a small light and in front of which, night and 
day, two sentries were always on guard. 

As the little party — four soldiers, a sergeant, 
and the two prisoners — passed through the gate 
in the barbed wire and came into the circle of 
light cast by the single incandescent over the 
door, Dick glanced for the first time at his fel- 


THE MAN IN THE HANGAR 109 

low prisoner, who had so far not made a sound. 
He could not repress an exclamation of mingled 
astonishment and horror. 

For in the uncertain light he found himself 
staring, not at Doughty, the suspected mechanic, 
but at Clark! 


CHAPTER XIV 

Under Suspicion 

It would be easier to imagine than to describe 
Dick Allen’s sensations as he saw Clark’s white, 
set face in the light at the door of the guard- 
house. He was thunderstruck at the discovery 
that it was Clark and not Doughty who had 
been at some black business in the dark interior 
of the hangar, but it was not this thought which 
drove the color from his own face and set in his 
heart a feeling of cold terror such as he had 
never before experienced. 

Clark was the one person in camp who knew 
the real explanation of Dick’s presence outside 
the hangar! It was on the perfect dovetailing 
of his own story with the one Clark would tell 
that he had depended for clearing himself. And 
now here was Clark with a spy’s noose literally 
around his neck, and any story he might tell 
worse than worthless so far as any value it might 
have in clearing another man’s actions of the 
suspicion of guilt! 

Not for an instant could he doubt the deadly 


UNDER SUSPICION 


hi 


seriousness of his predicament. His previous 
record, of course, would count in his favor. But, 
as far as that went, Clark’s record was as good 
as his own! And yet, even in his own mind, 
there was no doubt of Clark’s guilt. How, then, 
could he hope for belief in his innocence on the 
part of officers who knew little or nothing about 
him, and who would have as little pity for a spy 
as they would for a mad dog or a deadly snake? 

To his great relief, he was left wholly to him- 
self. He had feared that he and Clark might 
be put in the same room, and he had no wish to 
be forced to talk. He wanted first to do all the 
thinking possible. He realized that he was still 
very much in Clark’s hands; that his plight 
would depend very largely on the story that 
Clark told when he was examined. He wished 
that he knew Clark better, knew him well enough 
io be more or less sure of the sort of part he 
Would play, — whether he would be likely to try 
to drag an innocent man down with him, or go 
to the other extreme and take the whole burden 
of guilt upon himself. 

He thought that previously he had known 
some pretty long hours, but never had any 
passed with such leaden slowness as those which 
dragged themselves along between the moment 
when the door of the narrow room was closed 


1 1 2 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


behind him and that when the first streak of 
morning light showed itself through the tiny 
window above his head. 

So it was with unspeakable relief that, before 
it was really broad daylight, he heard steps out- 
side his door and the rattling of the lock. A 
moment later the door was flung wide, and a 
sergeant stood in the opening. Back of him 
Dick caught a glimpse of two soldiers with fixed 
bayonets. 

“Come on!” the sergeant said shortly. 

He was led out of the building, and into a 
closed motor-ambulance which stood just outside 
the wire. A single glance showed him that the 
street was almost empty; there were no ob- 
servers of his shame. As he had expected, the 
ambulance drove directly and rapidly to Head- 
quarters, and he was curtly ordered to get out. 

Dick strode quickly across the few feet of 
plank sidewalk and into the familiar outer cor- 
ridor of the Headquarters building. A door 
opened in front of him, and he passed through; 
the door closed behind him, and he stood stiffly 
at attention. 

As he brought his heels sharply together and 
straightened his arms at his sides, Dick had just 
time for a hurried glance at the men in the 
room. There were only five: the burly Major 


UNDER SUSPICION 


ii3 

behind his flat-topped desk, Captain Blake’s tall 
figure near one of the windows, the Judge Advo- 
cate, the Major’s orderly, and in a camp-chair 
near the window, sitting so that Dick could not 
see his face, a slender man in civilian’s clothes. 

The Major’s first question came like the lash 
of a whip. 

“Why were you outside barracks last night, 
Allen?” 

“ I was watching the hangars, sir.” 

Dick’s eyes never left the Major’s face. He 
did not see the civilian near the window look up 
with a start of surprise at the sound of his voice. 

“You weren’t detailed to that duty?” 

“No, sir.” 

The Major paused, moved an ink-bottle from 
one side of the desk to the other, then moved it 
back. 

“ This is not a court-martial,” he said slowly. 
“That will come later. For reasons of my own, 
I am giving you, before witnesses, a chance to 
answer certain questions. You are not obliged 
to answer them. If you please, you may stand 
mute and face the regular court-martial which 
will be summoned later in the day.” 

He paused and looked up. 

“ I should prefer to answer your questions 
now, sir,” Dick said quickly. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


114 

The Major looked at him sharply from under 
his bushy eyebrows. The keen gray eyes seemed 
to go through Dick’s body and reach the wall 
behind him. 

“ Did Clark tell you to go to the hangars last 
night?” he asked suddenly. 

The question took Dick by surprise, but for- 
tunately he answered without that second’s hesi- 
tation which would have been heavily against 
him. 

“Yes, sir.” 

He was conscious that three of the men whose 
eyes were fixed on him betrayed their astonish- 
ment at his answer by slight starts of surprise, 
and he took a little courage from this fact. 
Evidently they had believed him innocent. 

“You knew, then, that Clark was inside the 
hangars?” 

“No, sir.” 

The Major rose from his seat. 

“Do you realize, Allen, that you have con- 
tradicted yourself on the second question put 
you? ” 

“ I know it sounds like one, sir, but it ’s exactly 
the truth.” 

Major Cameron, his hands clasped behind his 
back, walked the length of the room. The others 
waited. 


UNDER SUSPICION 


1 15. 

“Are you aware of the charge under which 
you and Clark have been arrested?” 

“ I think so, sir.” 

The Major made a brusque movement with 
one hand, as though unable to understand Dick’s 
answers. 

“Would you like to give us your own version 
of last night’s events ? ” he demanded. 

“Very much, sir.” 

“Go ahead.” 

Dick began with the facts of the overheated 
motor, and went on until the moment when he 
crashed to the ground with his arms around 
Clark’s legs, still supposing that it was Doughty 
he had captured. 

Somehow he expected to be instantly believed, 
and it was with something of a shock that he fin- 
ished and found Major Cameron and the others 
apparently unmoved by his narration. The 
other officers had not altered their positions, the 
man in civilian’s clothes still sat by the window 
with one hand covering his face. 

Major Cameron put a single question when 
he had finished. 

“ Have you talked with Clark since you were 
arrested?” 

“No, sir.” 

“That’s all!” 


1 1 6 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

Major Cameron opened another door at the 
far end of the room and motioned Dick toward 
it. He stepped through and found himself in a 
small storeroom, having only the single door 
and a small window. The door was closed and 
locked behind him. He sat down on a stool, 
wondering why he had been put in there and not 
taken back to the guard-house. 

Almost at once he heard the tramp of feet in 
the hall beyond the wall of the closet, and the 
thud of rifles being grounded. Then from the 
room he had just left came the sound of an open- 
ing and closing door. An instant later the Major 
resumed speaking, and another voice answered. 
Dick jumped. They had left him where he 
could overhear the questioning of Clark! 

The Major asked only a couple of questions, 
then stopped speaking and another voice took 
up the examination. At the sound of this voice 
Dick had a feeling that it was wholly familiar, 
and yet he couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t 
Captain Blake’s, wasn’t the Judge Advocate’s; 
it must belong to the man in citizen’s clothes. 
Dick felt that if he could have had a close look 
at the man he would surely have recognized him. 
He was certain that this was not the first time 
he had heard the voice. 

From his uncomfortable seat in the little room, 


UNDER SUSPICION 


117 

he could hear a good deal of what went on. Not 
every word was distinct, but he caught enough 
to catch the general trend of the ordeal through 
which Clark was being put, and at first he could 
'not make head or tail of it. 

Clark seemed much less terrified and unsteady 
than might have been expected. His voice 
sounded firm and he answered the questions 
which were put to him without the slightest hesi- 
tation. 

It was the nature of these questions which 
completely puzzled Dick. They did not seem to 
have anything to do with the events of the night 
before, or with anything which seemed con- 
nected with Clark’s recent activities. They 
seemed peculiarly innocent, dealing with names, 
dates, and places which were so much Greek to 
Dick, indicating merely that the man who was 
asking the questions possessed a surprising famil- 
iarity with the details of Clark’s past life. 
Finally the effects of this system made them- 
selves apparent, for Clark broke out sharply: 

“It’s no good your going over all the 
ground! I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do 
the thing!” 

There succeeded that heavy, painful silence. 
Then suddenly the nature of the questions 
changed with an abruptness that must have 


1 1 8 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

startled the man under fire even more com- 
pletely than it did Dick. 

“ How did you and your companion happen to 
fall in such a peculiar way when trying to make 
your escape last night?” demanded the steady 
voice. 

There was an instant’s pause, and it seemed to 
Dick that his heart stopped beating, so much 
hung upon Clark’s answer. 

“The other man wasn’t my companion,” 
Clark replied. 

“ You know who he was ? ” 

“ Yes, sir. I saw his face at the guard-house.” 

“Then how did it happen you were to- 
gether?” 

“ He was watching the hangars.” 

“ Watching them? Why?” 

“ Because I told him to.” 

“And yet you say he knew nothing?” 

“ I don’t want to implicate Allen. I was mak- 
ing use of him to cover up my own tracks. It 
just happened that he suspected one of the me- 
chanics. I pretended to agree with him.” 

“That’s all!” said the other voice suddenly. 

Again came the opening and closing of the 
door, the tramp of feet along the corridor, then 
the key was turned in the door of the storeroom, 
and an orderly motioned Dick to come out. He 


UNDER SUSPICION 


119 

walked out and stopped at attention in front of 
the Major’s desk. 

“You are a very fortunate man, Allen,” the 
Major said gravely. “You are relieved from 
arrest, but will remain confined to your barracks 
until further orders.” 

He inclined his head slightly in dismissal. 
Dick saluted, turned on his heel, and started for 
the door. As he did so, his eyes encountered 
the face of the man in civilian’s clothes. It was 
David Whitmore ! 


CHAPTER XV 

Sound Advice 

Dick Allen and David Whitmore were seated 
on a pile of lumber in a far corner of the camp. 
In the air overhead half a dozen planes were 
soaring this way and that; a little distance away 
a company of men were at squad-drill, and 
across the dusty field lumbered and chugged one 
of the long trains of big motor-trucks which were 
forever coming and going. 

Several days had passed since the black busi- 
ness by the hangars. The trial and conviction 
by court-martial of Cadet Clark had been fin- 
ished with a speed and silence that would have 
been impossible under any but the rigid disci- 
pline of a military community. Most of the men 
in camp were entirely ignorant of exactly what 
Clark had done. They knew that he had com- 
mitted some offense; that he had been expelled 
from the service; there was talk that he had gone 
to a federal prison. Dick, the only man in the 
camp who could have helped them, held his 
tongue. 


SOUND ADVICE 


I 2 I 


David Whitmore had not left the camp im- 
mediately on the conclusion of the Clark case, 
but had remained for several days. This was 
the first time, however, that Dick had had a real 
chance to talk to him. Their intercourse, up to 
this point, had been limited to a brief hand-shake 
and a few curt words from Whitmore, more or 
less in the line of duty. Now, however, the 
former engineer was in a relaxed mood. 

“This Clark business,” he said thoughtfully, 
knocking the ash from his cigar, “ is the sort of 
thing that is hardest for us to combat. And it ’s 
also the sort of thing that fills you with breath- 
less wonder at the completeness of the German 
system of espionage. When you realize what 
they can do in this country now, with their atten- 
tion so occupied on the other side, you can’t 
wonder that they knew everything that was 
going on in Europe for years before the war 
broke out. 

“Now this young Clark, which isn’t his real 
name, but which will do, was a thoroughly fine 
chap, — good education, good instincts, all that 
sort of thing. And I don’t believe that when he 
first went into the service he was rotten at the 
core. But his people were Germans, and up to 
the time we went into the war, I suppose his sym- 
pathies were German. 


122 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“And when the pinch came, he couldn’t hold 
out. The grip of that military caste system was 
too strong for him. I don’t know exactly how 
or when those devils got hold of him, or just what 
promises they held out. But they poisoned his 
mind. They got behind his real intelligence and 
made him believe that he was doing the right 
thing. Think of that I He actually thought he 
was right! 

“ Funny part of it is that the Beecher business, 
’way back months ago, helped me with this case. 
When I was digging up the record and activities 
of this fellow Beecher, I discovered a little nest 
in Chicago. Fellow pretended to be a drawing- 
teacher — guess he could draw too. Chap him- 
self slipped through our fingers and got into 
Mexico, but he left traces. We managed to run 
down seven of the men who had been in this 
drawing-class. They were everywhere. Evi- 
dently Beecher and Clark were the two told off 
for aviation service. Good thing it was Clark 
and not Beecher who got as far as he did.” 

“Why?” Dick asked. 

“Because,” explained Whitmore,” Beecher 
was a dangerous man and Clark wasn’t. He 
was poor timber for the sort of work he was 
trying to do. Too straight. Had a conscience 
and scruples. Beecher was n’t troubled that way. 


SOUND ADVICE 


123 

I haven’t forgiven him yet for that drugged 
cigar! 

“If it had been Beecher instead of poor 
Clark down here in this camp, he’d have got 
results. Can’t say just what they ’d have been, 
but they would n’t have been pretty, — dynamite 
under a barracks building or something of that 
sort. But Clark — ! His work was pitiful. He 
had no instinct for wrongdoing, no creative abil- 
ity in the way of German devilishness. What 
few things he did to the new planes that night 
were perfectly harmless, and would have been 
discovered when the planes were set up. Any 
sort of a mechanic could have undone all his 
damage in an hour’s time ! ” 

He stopped and flung away the end of his 
cigar. 

“You know,” he said, “you’re pretty lucky, 
Allen.” 

“ I guess I am,” agreed Dick. 

“You bet you are! If any other agent than 
myself had been sent down here, there ’s a good 
chance you might be in a federal prison yet, and 
a long ways from clear of the charges against 
you. I knew you: another man wouldn’t. In 
his eyes you and Clark would have been two 
of a kind. And we don’t stop to ask questions. 
Can’t. And on the surface this other chap’s 


124 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


record is as good as yours. It just happened I 
knew he was smirched with the Boche stain, and 
I ’d have bet any money you were n’t.” 

“ I suppose,” Dick said after a pause, “ that 
all this business means I ’ll be gray-haired before 
I get a commission.” 

Whitmore grunted non-committally. 

“ May, may not,” he answered tersely. “ My* 
advice to you is to forget anything and every- 
thing but your job. You’re here to fly. All 
right, fly ! If somebody else wants to get up in 
the middle of the night and hang posters of the 
Kaiser on all the buildings, you let ’em do it. Or 
if you happen to look out the window and see 
’em doing it, you call the corporal of the guard, 
but don’t try to stop the show yourself ! 

“ Remember back in your hurdling days, each 
man ran between strings, didn’t he? And if he 
switched over into the other man’s string-marked 
path, there was a spill, and the fellow who got 
out of his own rut was disqualified, eh?” 

“Yes,” agreed Dick. 

“That’s your case. You keep between your 
own strings.” 

He stopped with the abruptness which Dick 
had learned to expect in him, glanced at his 
watch, and announced that he had to catch a 
train. 


SOUND ADVICE 


125 


“You might drop me a line from Paris when 
you get across,” he said. “ Some years since I ’ve 
been there and I like the place.” 

Dick laughed. “ I guess I won’t need to brush 
up on my French for some time to come — after 
this,” he said. 

Whitmore considered. “ I Ve given you con- 
siderable advice,” he said. “ First I told you to 
keep your eyes open, and you made the mistake 
of not telling the right people what you saw — or 
thought you saw. Now I Ve just told you to 
keep your own part of the track. Now I ’ll add 
that if I were in your place I ’d brush up my 
French. You never can tell ! ” 

And before Dick realized it, his hand had 
been rung and Whitmore’s slight figure was hur- 
rying away. 


CHAPTER XVI 

The Summons 

Nothing could have been more uneventful than 
the two or three weeks following Whitmore’s 
departure. Dick Allen lived up to both the 
letter and the spirit of the advice which had been 
given him. He gave himself wholly and com- 
pletely to the work. Not that he had ever been 
at all inclined to shirk, but his recent experience 
had made him simply close his mind to all other 
considerations. 

He did not do this because he believed that 
Whitmore had spoken truthfully about the 
chances of an early departure for France, but 
because he realized that he had made a mistake 
and was anxious to try to make up for it. 

And then, out of a clear sky, the thing came ! 

Late one afternoon five of the cadets were 
summoned to Headquarters. Besides Dick 
there were Dan Ericsson, Grayson, Long, and 
Thompson. They were told nothing except to 
pack their kits and be prepared to leave the 
camp on an instant’s notice. 


THE SUMMONS 


127 

“What do you suppose it means ?” Dick 
asked Dan after they had returned to barracks. 

“ France,” Ericsson said shortly. 

“Wish I could think so,” Dick said. “What 
makes you so sure? ” 

“ Several things. They ’ve been shooting a lot 
of the fellows across to complete their training; 
been doing it ever since the first of the war. 
That ’s one thing. The other is the men they ’ve 
chosen.” 

“Meaning what?” 

“ I ’m not the man to blow my own horn,” 
Ericsson said, “but why pretend not to know 
that I happen to be a better shot with a Lewis 
than anybody else? And if I’d been asked to 
pick four of the best men here, I ’d have taken 
you and Grayson and Long and Thompson.” 

“All three of them can fly circles around me,” 
Dick said. 

“ I know they can,” agreed Dan with not very 
flattering readiness, “just as they can fly circles 
around me. But flying isn’t everything. I can 
shoot and you can ‘ spot,’ and we ’re neither of 
us bad flyers. So I say France.” 

“ May be just a transfer to some other camp,” 
Dick suggested. 

“Sure it may! But I say France, and I’m 
willing to bet I ’m right! ” 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ji 28 

Not twenty- four hours later the five men were 
again summoned, provided with railway trans- 
portation, and told to be ready in an hour’s time 
when an ambulance would take them to the near- 
est city. And in the dim gray of an early spring 
twilight they found themselves packed into the 
big motor, coat-collars turned up against the chill 
wind, whirring over the still frozen roads toward 
the lights of the city which had twinkled in front 
of them. 

The ambulance brought them into the station 
just in time to let them stretch their legs before 
climbing into the train, and a few minutes later 
they were flying eastward. 

Dick and his companions experienced on 
board the train the same difficulty in traveling 
with comfort that he had already encountered. 
Passengers considered all men in uniform as 
fair game for unlimited conversation, and those 
whose insignia betrayed the fact that they were 
in the Aviation Corps seemed to excite even 
more the curiosity and interest of the traveling 
public. 

Unfortunately, not all the passengers were 
alike. There were two or three of the unpleas- 
ant type, one man in particular. He was a short, 
florid man with a rather loud voice and a pair 
of protruding blue eyes. He had talked to first 


THE SUMMONS 


129 


one and then another of the men, but ended by 
approaching Dan Ericsson instead of Dick after 
having made life rather uncomfortable for the 
other three. 

“Going to New York?” he began with that 
species of smile which men of his type seem to 
think makes friends without further effort. 

“That direction,” answered Dan, eying the 
other with a steadiness which should have 
warned him. 

“Oh, what’s the use of all this mystery?” 
demanded the man. “ I guess there are n’t any 
Germans in the car. When do you sail?” 

“ I don’t know. Are we to sail ? ” 

“Of course you are. You — ” 

“What business are you in?” Dan inter- 
rupted suddenly. 

The man hesitated an instant. 

“ I sell boots and shoes,” he answered in evi- 
dent surprise. 

“Whose?” 

He named a little-known brand. 

Then in quick succession Dan asked him what 
territory he covered, how he found business 
conditions, whether or not his firm had war- 
contracts, what house gave him the most com- 
petition. The man was not enjoying himself at 
all and showed it. Moreover, the other pas- 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


130 

sengers were beginning to see Dan’s game, and 
all other conversation had stopped while they 
listened. 

“ Just let me see your orders, will you? ” Dan 
asked finally. 

“ My orders ! ” the man’s fat cheeks fairly 
puffed out with surprise and anger. “Well, 1^ 
guess not! You’ve got your nerve right with 
you, young man! ” 

“Good! ’-’ exclaimed Dan; “now I guess that 
we ought to understand each other. Your business 
is selling boots and shoes. Mine is serving the 
Government. I ’ve no right whatever to see your 
order-sheets, and you, considering the fact that 
the country happens to be at war, have a whole 
lot less business trying to see mine. Do you get 

, 1 _ 1 0 

me r 

Dan disappeared immediately behind an open 
newspaper, while the fat traveling salesman, 
very red of face, went hastily into the smoking 
compartment and was no more seen that night. 

Early the next morning the train rolled into 
the Grand Central Station at New York City, 
and the five cadets lost no time in reporting their 
arrival. All of them had expected a few days 
in which to “play about” New York, but they 
were told to hold themselves in readiness for de- 
parture at any moment. 


THE SUMMONS 13 1 

Within twelve hours of their arrival in the 
metropolis, their orders came, and the quintette 
were on their way to a designated pier along the 
great water-front. 


CHAPTER XVII 

Going Over 

To the eye of a landsman, unused to the things 
of the sea, there is always something rather over- 
whelming about the appearance of a big ship. It 
looks big and majestic enough in the full light 
of day. At night, when outlines are dim and 
actual dimensions difficult to determine, a mere 
river steamer can take on the appearance of the 
hugest liner that ever floated. Add to this an 
almost complete absence of lights, a huge, mov- 
ing mass of men in uniform, and a general air of 
rush and confusion, and the effect can be easily 
imagined. 

Dick and the others were not required to go 
on board at once, and he had plenty of time to 
watch the operation of loading men and supplies. 
He found that a good many of his ideas of the 
transporting of troops had to be hastily revised. 

A few blocks away from the slip, nobody 
would have guessed that a small army was being 
got aboard for the trip to Europe. Everything 
seemed to work with perfect smoothness. There 


GOING OVER 


i33 


was inevitable crowding on the docks, some 
rushing about by anxious subalterns and order- 
lies with orders and lists, but even these things 
did not seem to interrupt the steady flow of 
brown-clad columns through the huge gates of 
the pier and up the inclines to the ship. 

“ You can talk all you please about German 
efficiency,” Herman Long said at Dick’s shoul- 
der. “ I wish von Hindenburg and some of his 
pets could have a look at this! Maybe they’d 
change their ideas about the American army 
being a joke.” 

“They sure would!” Dick agreed heartily. 
“ But, Herman, are these transports like the cars 
on the subway ? Is n’t there any limit to the num- 
ber of men you can get into one?” 

“Not much limit with this boat,” Long an- 
swered, smiling, “ except the number of men you 
want to get into her.” 

“What ship is it — any idea? I didn’t know 
we had transports of such size.” 

“We wouldn’t have, but for our good friend 
the Kaiser,” replied Long. “If I’m not mis- 
taken, this is a present to Uncle Sam from 
Brother Bill! ” 

Seeing Dick’s look of amazement he went on 
to explain. 

“ It ’s one of those big transatlantic German 


134 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


liners that were interned in this country and later 
seized by the Government. And if this is the one 
I think it is, I ’d rather cross in her than fly over 
in a captured Zeppelin. Had a real close look 
at her? ” 

“ No,” admitted Dick. “ There was too much 
to see to hunt for details.” 

“ Come over here and take a good squint,” 
urged Herman. “It’s worth seeing, and you 
can get a better look now than after we’re on 
board.” 

Moving here and there about the crowded 
dock, they were able to get closer and clearer 
views of the great leviathan which was to take 
them through the submarine zone. Never until 
he began a close inspection under Long’s direc- 
tion had Dick realized what “ camouflage ” 
really meant. 

As the vessel lay at the dock only a few yards 
away, it was difficult to tell where her outlines 
stopped and the gray night sky commenced. Her 
disguise did not stop with the mist-colored paint 
which would render her hard to see against a 
background of tumbling, changing water on any 
but a bright day. She had been provided with 
a false prow, so that both ends of the vessel 
looked much alike, and it was that much more 
difficult to determine the direction of her course 


GOING OVER 


i35 


and the speed of her progress when viewing her 
from a distant shore or passing vessel. One of 
her four great stacks had been painted dead 
black, so that it loomed above her superstructure 
sharp and conspicuous, while the other three had 
been covered with daubs and streaks of neutral- 
tinted paint. In any but an excellent light, she 
would appear to have only a single funnel. 

Often enough Dick had imagined what the 
departure of a shipload of American troops 
looked like. He had pictured a huge vessel, her 
rails lined with brown figures waving campaign 
hats, the docks jammed with a vast crowd of 
cheering people, flags flying, bands playing. 

He had been on board the transport half an 
hour or so, getting acquainted with his surround- 
ings, keeping himself out of the way of the hun- 
dreds of men who evidently were much busier 
than himself, and wishing that he were attached 
to some unit so that he would really have some- 
thing to do. He had been conscious that for 
some minutes two or three sturdy sea-going tugs 
had been puffing steadily, but he had not thought 
what this meant, and he had set down to the 
steady tramp of feet the vibration of the decks. 
Not until Dan Ericsson laid a hand on his 
shoulder did he understand what had happened. 

“Well, Dick, we’re off!” Dan said. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


136 

Dick started and glanced over the rail. Al- 
ready the sky-line buildings of the great city had 
begun to move. Under the steady hauling of the 
tugs the ship had been warped out from the slip 
into the stream, and now her own great engines 
were in motion, and the huge propellers under 
her stern were churning the water. 

There had been no crowd, no blaring bands, 
no waving flags. Few people in the sleeping 
city knew that nearly twenty thousand American 
troops had left the shores, and yet with that 
silence and swiftness which means real effective- 
ness almost an entire division had embarked and 
sailed. The voyage overseas had actually begun. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

“VlVENT LES AMERICAINS!” 

The progress of the great gray transport which 
carried the cadets to France was so swift, so 
sure, so silent, she had the ocean so entirely 
to herself, that after a day and a night on board, 
everybody stopped wondering about the possi- 
bility of attack from one of von Tirpitz’s steel- 
sheathed sharks. 

Even to men like Dick, who knew little of the 
ways of the sea and had no experience in gauging 
the speed of ships, it was evident that the trans- 
port was tearing through the water at a pro- 
digious rate. It seemed that sheer speed alone 
was her surest defense. 

But the speed wasn’t all. Here and there 
about the decks, placed where they could com- 
mand the greatest possible sweep of waters, were 
slim, long-barreled, businesslike-looking naval 
guns, and night and day their blue-clad, white- 
hatted crews were near at hand. And every 
second, day and night, keen-eyed men perched 
in the lookouts were sweeping the waves in every 
direction for a sign of possible danger. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


138 

Dick and his companions were perhaps the 
idlest on board. The cadet flyer is a sort of 
hybrid — something between an officer and an 
enlisted man : he hasn’t actually received his com- 
mission, but he is going to get it soon. More- 
over, the five cadets weren’t attached to any of 
the different units on board, so that there was no 
one in immediate authority over them to say do 
this, that, or the other thing. 

This holiday atmosphere, however, was not 
destined to continue long. The five were marked 
down by the eagle eye of a colonel who knew 
that there were on board any number of regi- 
mental adjutants who could do with an extra 
clerk or two. 

So, before they were many hours out of port, 
Dick found himself attached to a very pleasant 
but extremely busy Captain Norton, adjutant of 
an infantry regiment, who was doing an enor- 
mous amount of work in quarters which a civilian 
clerk would have thought too cramped for his 
waste-basket. 

“ Can’t promise you much in the way of ex- 
citement, Mr. Allen,” the Captain said pleas- 
antly, looking up from a desk extemporized from 
a plank and a cask, “ but I ’ll guarantee to keep 
your mind off your other troubles! ” 

And he was as good as his word for the day 


VIVENT LES AMERICAINS! 139 

and a half that he had Dick under his orders. 
After this, however, another commander, known 
as “ Father Neptune,” decided to take imme- 
diate charge of Dick and many hundreds of 
other landsmen on board. He did a thorough 
job of it by beating up a ripping, snorting storm 
that apparently tried to see if it could make the 
ocean stand up on edge. On a sea like this even 
the great transport began to imitate a bobbing 
cork, and Dick Allen was one of thousands 
who lost interest in everything but the state of 
their stomachs and the first sight of land. 

Grayson and Dan Ericsson were the only two 
of the five cadets who were good sailors. They 
enjoyed the storm — or pretended to enjoy it — 
and took a vast amount of pleasure in watching 
the condition of their three unhappy companions, 
and of making fun of them — the seasick voy- 
ager having been the target for ridicule rather 
than sympathy since the beginning of the world.. 

“ Did you know, Dan,” Grayson asked in a ; 
tone loud enough so that the three victims would 
be sure to hear, “that there's a new test for 
aviators? ” 

“No,” answered Dan. “What is it?” 

“They call it the ‘sea-test.’ If a man misses 
more than two meals on the way across they 
make him a ‘ keewee’ ! ” 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


140 

Grayson made use of the slang word of the 
aviation camps, the keewee being an Australian 
bird which has wings, but doesn’t fly, and the 
term being one of good-natured scorn applied by 
{he flyers to the men in the non-flying branches 
of the service. 

Herman Long raised his head at Grayson’s 
speech. 

“You can make all the fun of me you like,” 
he announced, “but if you so much as mention 
anything to eat, I ’m going to throw the nearest 
thing at you, even if it ’s a hand-grenade ! ” 

Still rather pallid and wobbly when the storm 
finally ended, Dick took his unwilling way back 
to the crowded corner where Captain Norton 
{oiled. The harassed adjutant took one look at 
his face and waved him aside. 

“You get out on deck and fill yourself with 
air and any sunshine that may be lying around 
loose ! ” he ordered cheerfully. “ I need help 
fast enough, but I want a man and not a ghost. 
Plenty of chaps who are fit to help out. You 
trot along.” 

So it happened that Dick was on deck instead 
of inside, literally obeying Norton’s orders and 
filling himself with air and sunshine, when the 
one exciting incident of the voyage took place. 

According to brief reports published about a 


VIVENT LES AMERICAINS! 141 

week later in the American papers, the great 
transport was attacked by one or more subma- 
rines while still some distance from the English 
coast. Some men on board claimed to have 
seen the submarine, but Dick was inclined to ac- 
cept these claims with a large grain of salt. 

The first intimation of anything amiss came 
with a sharp call from the lookout. Following 
this there had been some scurrying about of the 
figures on the bridge, and without haste, but with 
that easy swiftness born of long practice and a 
complete absence of waste motions, the various 
gun-crews had gone to their posts. 

Some little excitement had attended the alarm 
as a matter of course. For there did exist the 
possibility that there actually was a U-boat in 
sight, and that it would manage to hit the trans- 
port with a torpedo. 

Word of the threatening danger was passed 
swiftly to all parts of the ship, even as the mon- 
ster engines far down in the giant craft were 
speeded up to their top notch. There were 
bugle-calls sounding everywhere, men off duty 
hurrying to their places, the crew going to “ col- 
lision quarters ” as on a warship, officers and 
N.C.O.’s looking to the passing out of the life 
belts that were always within reach at specified 
points. 


142 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


There was not the slightest suggestion of panic, 
very little real excitement An hour after the 
first alarm the entire incident was over, and the 
transport’s wireless was sending out reassuring 
messages on the heels of the first announcements 
that she was attacked which had been sent broad- 
cast over the seas, and flashing out in code to 
any friendly ships which might pick up her 
radios the location in which the “ sub ” had been 
sighted, and the direction in which it had been 
traveling when last seen. 

Had Dick been awake during the night which 
followed, he would not have said afterwards 
that the shadowy submarine attack was the one 
exciting incident of the voyage, for near mid- 
night the transport reached those waters which 
are combed and watched every hour of the 
day and night by the vessels of three navies. 

From midnight until dawn the waters about 
the rushing gray mass were incessantly dotted 
with other swift-moving shapes, destroyers, 
trawlers, patrol-boats, cruisers, two or three 
grim dreadnaughts farther shoreward. There 
was a constant interchange of signals, lights 
winked out and vanished. 

Yet all this went on in silence and with no 
diminishing of the gray ship’s steady speed. She 
was being made welcome, assured that the last 


VIVENT LES AMERI CAINS! 143 

miles of her long journey had been made safe 
as might be. 

Of all this spectacle, however, Dick Allen saw 
nothing. He was making up arrears of sleep, 
lost during the storm, and knew nothing until 
roused by the blowing bugles and orderly con- 
fusion of swift preparations. 

Here was a crowd of soldiers as large as a 
small city, packed into the compass of a single 
ship, yet now being prepared for disembarka- 
tion with little more confusion than as though 
two instead of twenty thousand men were to be 
taken ashore. 

On such occasions every man had to have his 
place. The five cadets, even though attached to 
none of the units on board the vessel, were now 
under orders and given their definite place just 
as though they had been privates in a company 
of infantry or a battery of artillery, and were 
fortunate enough to be ordered ashore with 
the orderlies of the Headquarters staff. This 
brought them early on deck, and gave them an 
excellent chance to see the whole process of land- 
ing the troops. 

When Dick first reached the deck he gave a 
sharp exclamation of surprise and delight. The 
transport had come in out of a gray and smoky 
dawn and come to anchor perhaps half a mile 


144 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


from the shore. The morning mists had begun 
to rise and vanish, and in the clear light Dick 
looked across the rippling water at a stone quay 
and a quaint, unreal-looking coast town such as 
he had seen illustrating fairy tales, but never ex- 
pected to see in real life. In the offing, seaward 
from the transport, several destroyers, a single 
swift cruiser, and a host of smaller craft moved 
about, while over the water between the trans- 
port and the shore launches and lighters, some 
empty, some packed with men in olive-drab uni- 
forms, were already plying back and forth. It 
was a picture which stamped itself upon Dick’s 
brain. 

A few minutes later he had taken his place 
along with Dan and the others in one of the 
lighters, and was moving swiftly shoreward. As 
he looked back at the motionless transport he 
saw even more clearly than had been possible in 
the darkness of the docks in New York how 
much the great ship had been disguised. The 
mist-colored paint, the false bow, the queer color- 
ing of the funnels, made her look like a ghost- 
ship, a phantom. Some of the smaller vessels 
beyond her, even though much farther away, 
looked far more distinct and real. 

As the lighter drew in toward the stone quay, 
Dick saw that the latter was crowded with peo- 


VIVENT LES AMERICAINS! 145 

pie, for the most part women, children, and old 
men, and there was a steady chatter of shrill 
voices. Two gendarmes, in queer, old-fashioned 
uniforms that looked very strange alongside the 
businesslike brown of the Americans, were keep- 
ing the people from crowding too close to the 
edge. 

It was all very pretty and amusing until the 
lighter came alongside the stone pier, then, as 
Dick and the others climbed up the worn steps, 
he realized that there was another and a different 
side to the scene. 

The moment the brown-clad, steel-helmeted 
figures of the Americans began to move shore- 
ward along the quay, the crowd rushed forward 
in spite of the efforts of the fussy little gen- 
armes to hold them back. 

“ Vivent les americains ! 99 shouted the people. 
“ Vivent les americains ! ” 

And then Dick realized that it wasn’t just 
excitement; that even the children were moved 
by something deeper and more serious than the 
thrill of a parade or spectacle. He saw women 
and girls run forward merely to touch the big 
soldiers from across the sea; old men, hats in 
hand, hobble out to put their shaking hands on 
the broad shoulders of the newcomers. Every- 
where he saw the good people of the little sea- 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


146 

port crying, and a closer look showed him that 
many of these weeping women wore the black 
which showed that they had lost sons or husbands 
or brothers in the war. 

Here were these brave, patient, long-suffering 
people of France, who for four years had borne 
the heaviest burdens of the greatest war of all 
times. Their courage was unshaken, but their ' 
strength was passing; so many of their young 
men had fallen. And here from across the sea 
came these strong young men of another race, 
to take the places of the sons and fathers and 
brothers who had gone, to make sure of victory, 
the cause for which these people had fought so 
long. 

A lump came into Dick’s throat and he turned 
back toward the sea. Now the water was thickly 
dotted with the moving lighters, and from every 
one of them came the full-throated, heartening 
shouts of the packed brown figures. 

“Dan,” begged Dick, turning to Ericsson, 

“ say something funny or punch me on the nose 
and make me mad or I ’ll be crying like a baby 
in another minute ! ” 

The big Minnesotan turned, and immedi- 
diately blew his nose with a huge racket, although 
Dick knew that Dan hadn’t the sign of a cold. 

“ I ’d have done it myself in another minute ! ” 


VIVENT LES AMERICAINS! 147 

confessed Dan. “ And just think of it, Dick, if 
we had n’t happened to do the right thing when 
we were spun round in a swivel-chair, we ’d have 
missed all this ! ” 

Dick nodded, glanced down at his feet, and 
smiled a little to himself. It was hard to realize, 
and yet that good brown earth under the soles 
of his army shoes was actually the soil of France ! 


CHAPTER XIX 
Clipped Wings 

“That back,” declared Dan Ericsson, nodding 
toward a far corner of the room, u looks mighty 
familiar to me, even if the uniform is strange 1 ” 

Dick Allen followed the direction of his com- 
panion’s gesture. They had been sitting for 
nearly three hours in an inconspicuous corner of 
a big Parisian cafe, perfectly content to use their 
eyes and watch the absorbing sight. 

They had been granted four days’ leave and 
thrown pretty much on their own resources for 
spending it, for Grayson had gone to England! 
while Long and Thompson had been sent to 
Italy. And while Dick and Dan both possessed 
some French, they found that the French of their 
college classrooms and that spoken by the inhab- 
itants of Paris seemed to be two distinct lam 
guages. 

They never tired of watching the uniforms, 
whose number and variety were endless. There 
were dozens of different French uniforms, all of 
them with the light blue predominating, the 
greenish uniforms of Italian officers, British 


CLIPPED WINGS 


149 


khaki, the olive-drab of Americans, here and 
there the khaki of the new Belgian service uni- 
forms, or the rare sight of a lonely Serbian in a 
sort of olive-brown with a soft-crowned, brim- 
less cap. 

But it was to an even more conspicuous uni- 
form which Dan had just called attention, one in 
which the protective color of modern warfare 
was wholly lacking. The uniform was dead 
black with scarlet trimmings, and a scarlet crown 
to the forage cap — the dress uniform of the 
French air service. 

And as Dan had said, the back of the man 
who wore it did look familiar. The two Amer- 
icans stared at him for an instant, then with one 
accord rose from their seats and sent a shout of 
“ Bob! ” across the intervening tables. 

People at the surrounding tables turned to 
stare good-naturedly, and at the same time Bob 
Holmquist came striding toward them. A 
moment later he was seated between them, while 
they stared at the splendor of his garb with un- 
disguised awe and envy. Bob observed this and 
grinned complacently. 

“Gay bird, ain’t I?” he demanded. “They 
let me look this way when I ’m on leave in Paris, 
but on work days I ’m a dirtier-looking specimen 
than ever any of us were back in the States.” 


I 5° 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“Tell us about it,” insisted Dick. 

“ It’s all told in one word — work,” answered 
Holmquist. “These French, my sons, are all 
from Missouri. They’ve got to be shown! 
They haven’t told me in so many words that 
they don’t think I know any more about flying 
than any French baby you might pick out of a 
perambulator on the boulevards, but their actions 
indicate it. I have begun all over from the 
ground up.” 

“Then you haven’t been doing any real fly- 
ing?” . 

“A little, — just about one per cent of what I 
expected to have done by this time. But let me 
tell you, flying at the front and flying over the 
training-field are two mighty different things. 
Wait till you see some of the stunts these French 
flyers do. 

“ A while back the Government wanted some 
new planes tested. Two of the big French ‘ aces * 
were recuperating at a hospital back of the lines. 
One of them was asked to try out the new planes. 
He did, and took the other man up with him. 
They flew back over Paris, and then began to do 
stunts. The first thing they did was to dive at 
the taxis on the streets and scare the drivers and 
people along the streets into fits. I saw a man 
who witnessed the performance, and he swears 


CLIPPED WINGS 


i5 1 

they did n’t miss some of the machines by more 
than a few feet. 

“ Then they flew down to the Place de la Con- 
corde, dropped down close to the ground and 
commenced turning ‘figure eights’ among the 
circle of statues. 

“You’d have thought that was enough, but 
not for this pair! They flew on down to the 
Arc de Triomphe. It isn’t wide enough to let a 
plane through, so what did these lunatics do but 
fly through it edgewise !” 

“And what happened to ’em?” Dan asked. 

“ Oh, they were arrested and got a month’s 
imprisonment,” answered Bob, “but that just 
goes to show the sort these French flyers are. — 
Got your assignment yet?” 

Dick answered that they had and named the 
city. Holmquist whistled. 

“Then our real reunion is postponed for a 
while yet,” he said. “ In that case we ’re due to 
see all we can of Paris in three days’ time, which 
is some order! Come on, let’s get started I ” 

Under Bob’s leadership they made the most 
of the three days which remained to them, and 
saw about as much of the war-time capital as it is 
possible to see in the time which they had at 
their disposal. Neither of the two newcomers, 
however, had eyes for famous buildings, streets, 


152 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


or bridges. They were interested solely in the 
evidences and signs of war. French, English, 
and Belgian uniforms were not to them the old 
story which they had become to Holmquist, and 
they were as eager and full of questions as two 
small boys at a circus. Finally the Texan gave 
up trying to play guide. 

“See here,” he objected, “if you think I’m 
going to run my legs off showing you places 
while you follow me with your heads over your 
shoulders, you’ve got another guess! All you 
want to see is soldiers. You can do that just as 
well sitting down on any street-corner.” 

“What’s that uniform, Bob?” Dick asked 
quickly, paying no attention to the other’s out- 
burst. 

“ French Colonials,” Bob answered wearily, 
with a gesture of resignation. 

“ If it were n’t that you had ‘ Yankee * written 
all over you,” he added, laughing, “your curi- 
osity would have had you arrested as German 
spies forty-eight hours ago ! ” 

At noon of the fourth day they separated, Bob 
to return to his post at one of the Flying Corps 
posts along the front line, the others to go to one 
of the great schools in the south of France, far 
removed from the actual zone of hostilities. 

They arrived late at night, and in the midst 


CLIPPED WINGS 


153 

of a cold, dismal rain, at a sleepy little station 
which seemed to be wholly military. A dripping 
sentry led them over a cobble-paved street to a 
long, low building where they were received by 
a young French lieutenant, who managed to be 
polite even though he was evidently half dead 
with fatigue. 

“In the morning,” he promised, “you shall 
see Captain Poiret. Now it is too late for any- 
thing but bed.” 

Captain Poiret, who was to be their com- 
mander for some weeks to come, proved to be 
anything but French in appearance when they 
came before him the next morning. He was 
short, square-built, slightly bald, and smooth- 
shaven, with a pale skin and blue eyes. He was 
courteous but brief, and finished the interview 
with the efficient haste of a busy man. Within 
an hour they had been assigned to their quarters, 
provided with uniforms, and had actually begun 
their work. 

And for long, dreary weeks they knew noth- 
ing but work. The weather changed from the 
last fringe of winter to the beginnings of sum- 
mer, yet they continued to spend their time at the 
monotonous grind of training. They found that 
Holmquist had not exaggerated : they were made 
to begin at the very beginning of flying training, 


154 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


actually doing their first work in “ grass-cutters,” 
machines which were unable to lift themselves 
into the air, and following this with “taxi” and 
“hop” practice. 

But even though they were actually being put 
to the same work which they had already done, 
they realized that this was really post-graduate 
training. For one thing, the men with whom 
they were working were a different class from 
the youngsters in the training-camps on the other 
side of the ocean. These men, about thirty in 
all, represented almost every one of the Allied 
nations. The majority of them were French- 
men, but there were also English, Americans, 
Belgians, a couple of Russians, and one lone 
Montenegrin. Most of them were over twenty- 
five, had done considerable actual flying, and 
had seen service at some part or other of the 
front. 

Late one April afternoon they returned to 
their quarters, grimy and oil-splashed from a 
long siege of repair work on planes which had 
been damaged in actual service, to find an orderly 
from Headquarters waiting for them. 

“You are to report to Captain Poiret at 
once,” he announced. 

Dick looked at his grimy hands and uniform, 
then looked dubiously at Dan. 


CLIPPED WINGS 


i55 

“ How about it? ” he asked. 

“ With Poiret ‘ at once ’ means just that and 
not five minutes later,” answered Dan. “ If we 
can beat that orderly back to Headquarters, it ’s 
that much in our favor.” 

So they started at once and reached Head- 
quarters (the former residence of the village 
mayor) almost on the heels of the orderly who 
had summoned them. Captain Poiret, seated 
behind his desk, observed their appearance with 
a grim smile of satisfaction, and they knew at 
once that following Dan’s “hunch” had not 
harmed them. 

“ I am glad to say,” Poiret began with his 
usual directness, “ that your work here has been 
wholly satisfactory, and that my reports to that 
effect, coupled with your records forwarded from 
the United States, have hastened your commis- 
sions. You will prepare to leave by the seven 
o’clock train this evening, and will report to 
Colonel Toussaud in Paris immediately after 
arriving.” 

Then he rose from the desk and, to the aston- 
ishment of the two men, cast aside his usual 
manner and talked to them in a most kindly and 
informal manner for several minutes before he 
dismissed them. 

Once outside the door and on their way back 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


1 56 

to their quarters Dan looked at his companion 
and grinned. 

“Well, Lieutenant! ” he said. 

“Old top,” answered Dick, “we’re actually 
going to get into it! ” 

And, to the open-eyed amazement of the vil- 
lagers who saw them, the pair proceeded to 
sprint all the way back to quarters. 


r CHAPTER XX 
The Night-Raider 

Had Dick Allen gone straight to the front after 
landing in France, he would have been dis- 
appointed at not getting into action within a few 
hours. But the long weeks at the French train- 
ing-school had prepared him for further delays. 
Even though he had now been commissioned, 
and received the salutes of men who a few days 
before had been his equals, he was still a good 
deal of a novice in the eyes of the veteran flyers 
of the squadron. 

Their quarters lay in territory which had been 
fought over. Headquarters was located in a 
country house whose walls bore marks of battle, 
and whose grounds were still pock-marked with 
shell-craters ; the flying-field had across its center 
the line of an old trench, and the quarters of the 
men were in a village a third of which had been 
shattered by Krupp shells. 

The proximity to the front made Dick feel for 
the first time that he had an actual part in the 
war. He had become so thoroughly accustomed 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


158 

to the sight of planes that he was much more 
likely to glance at a motor-cycle whizzing along 
one of the white roads than at an aircraft buz- 
zing overhead. Now, however, he glanced up 
at the first sound of a motor, to see whether the 
plane were a friend or a foe. The planes which 
he saw rise from the field at all hours of the day 
were not merely going out for trial spins, but for 
real collision with the enemy, and the men with 
whom he was thrown in daily contact brought 
back tales of thrilling duels hundreds of feet 
above ground, swift forays into the heart of hos- 
tile territory, precious bits of information as to 
new dispositions of the enemy’s forces, which, 
translated by the busy minds at Headquarters, 
warned the Allies where the next blow might 
fall. 

It was little more than ten miles (only a few 
minutes’ rush for a plane) from the ruined vil- 
lage to the nearest point in the trench-area. 
Artillery fire, and sometimes, when the wind was 
right, rifle fire as well, was nearly always audible. 
The road running through the village was one of 
the main arteries for traffic, and over it, day and 
night, moved a varied stream. Now it was fresh 
regiments (mostly French, sometimes British) 
moving up to take over a section of trenches ; now 
regiments relieved from duty, dog-tired, covered 


THE NIGHT-RAIDER 


*59 

with mud, coming back for the welcome period 
in rest-billets ; now batteries of guns ; occasionally 
long strings of ambulances with their grisly bur- 
dens ; and with welcome and increasing fre- 
quency batches and swarms of German prisoners 
convoyed by blue-clad French cavalrymen, car- 
bine on hip. 

The last few days had been peculiarly quiet, 
both in the air and on the ground. Just before 
he and Dan reached the village, matters had been 
lively enough, and there had been raids and 
counter-raids; the squadron had lost heavily in 
men and machines, and its strength had had to 
be recruited. Since then, however, there had been 
deadly quiet. The German Fokkers kept pretty 
well to their own lines, contenting themselves 
with defensive tactics, and on the ground the 
same conditions held good. Either Brother 
Boche was preparing something and keeping it 
thoroughly under cover, or his inactivity was 
real and he was busy at some other point in the 
long line. 

Nevertheless Dick could not keep away from 
Headquarters. Even with time to spend as he 
pleased, he went back to the very spot where 
duty would have called him. Headquarters was 
the very center of the nervous-system which 
watched the German lines. If anything should 


i6o THE DRAGON-FLIES 

happen, word of it would come in through one of 
the various channels of information almost as 
soon as it occurred, and Dick could not bear the 
thought of missing anything. 

In the outer room at Headquarters (once the 
music-room, and still distinguished by a grand 
piano which certainly saw more service and was 
more completely out of tune than ever it had 
been in the days before the war) he found three 
or four of his brother flyers gathered about a 
chessboard on which two of them were battling 
as though nothing but the struggle of the wooden 
pieces was of the slightest importance. 

One of the players had just called “ check” in 
a tone of triumph which indicated that he ex- 
pected to follow it ere long with the cry of 
“ mate,” when the door of the inner office opened 
and Colonel Farle, commander of the squadron, 
appeared. Instantly every man was on his feet, 
standing stiffly at attention. 

“ Merton,” snapped the Colonel, “ order all 
the planes run out. Every man is to hold him- 
self in readiness for instant duty. Lassel, see to 
it that every man in quarters is in readiness, 
whether on duty or not. Allen, you will accom- 
pany Captain Godard in Number Twelve ! ” 

Dick caught his breath sharply. Godard! 
He was to fly with Godard, the “ ace ” who wore 


THE NIGHT-RAIDER 161 

no fewer than three medals on his tunic, who had 
once brought down four German planes within 
twenty-five minutes, who had destroyed a supply- 
train single-handed, whose name was a byword 
for the most intrepid daring ! 

The American glanced at Godard and saw a 
slight frown cross his face at the words of the 
Colonel, but Godard’s face cleared instantly, and 
he turned to Dick with a pleasant smile. 

“ Suppose we have a look at Number Twelve,” 
he suggested, when they had left the room. “ I 
have n’t flown her much, but I believe she has the 
reputation of being a rather cranky beast.” 

Like every other man in the squadron, Dick 
was already thoroughly familiar with the history 
of Number Twelve. The machine was some- 
thing of a freak — and incidentally the apple of 
Colonel Farle’s warlike eye. 

The machine itself was half battle-plane, half 
reconnaissance machine, neither as fast as the 
one nor as heavy as the other. She was consid- 
erably larger than a Nieuport with a greater 
spread of wing, carrying an unusual armament 
and special engines. She had dual controls and 
carried two guns instead of one. One of these 
guns was a Lewis of the ordinary type, the 
second a heavier gun which did not fire so 
rapidly, but which could strike a heavier blow. 


162 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“And that,” declared Godard, who had been 
talking of the plane as he and Dick walked 
toward the hangars, “makes me pretty sure 
what we ’re in for.” 

“And that is — ?” Dick asked. 

“Zepps!” 

“It’s the Colonel’s theory,” the Frenchman 
continued as they approached the flying-field, 
“ that in fighting Zeppelins one heavy blow is 
worth a dozen sharp taps. Personally, I ’m not 
sure. Those big dirigibles have been brought 
down by the ordinary aircraft guns, and a ma- 
chine carrying a heavier one must be slower, and 
handicapped just that much in consequence.” 

They found the flying-field a scene of lively 
activity. Fourteen planes had been wheeled out 
and stood in a line in front of the hangars as 
though on dress-parade. Many of the motors 
were running, and groups of mechanics and flyers 
were about all the machines. 

Godard spent a few minutes talking to the 
mechanics, then went over himself every strut, 
spar, and rod of the machine, bent his head to 
listen to the steady roar of the powerful motor, 
tested the feeds, looked at the various gauges 
and instruments on the dash, glanced at the two 
guns, tested the wing-lights, and nodded shortly. 

“ Fit,” he said briefly. 


THE NIGHT-RAIDER 163 

“ Best shape she ’s ever been in, mon capi - 
taine” the soldier-mechanic answered confi- 
dently. 

After a moment more spent in sharp-eyed in, 
spection of his mount, Godard turned away. 

“ Best dress for the air,” he suggested, “ then 
drop back to Headquarters as soon as you can. 
I ’ve an idea the Colonel may have something to 
say about what to-night holds in store for us.” 

Half an hour later, clad in his flying-togs, 
Dick Allen was again in the outer room at Head- 
quarters. The place presented an altered ap- 
pearance. The chessboard and men had van- 
ished, all of the flyers in the room were dressed 
for the air, and the laughter and good-natured 
chaffing* of the earlier afternoon had given place 
to serious faces and low-voiced speculation on 
the night’s work. 

As Godard had predicted, Colonel Farle had 
a few words to say to his men. It was Zeppe- 
lins ! Scouting-planes at another point in the line 
had observed several of the great dirigibles ready 
for flight and apparently waiting for the dark- 
ness which was their greatest protection. There 
was no telling exactly where they would strike, 
although Paris was the probable objective. It 
was the duty of the squadron — as well as that 
of all the other posts along the front — to patrol 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


164 

the air all night, watching for the raiders’ ap- 
pearance and ready to strike. 

“And now,” Godard said as they left the 
room, “ for a few hours’ sleep ! ” 

“ Sleep ! ” exclaimed Dick, staring at his com- 
panion in amazement. 

Godard smiled. “You’ll get used to it,” he 
prophesied, “ even though now it probably seems 
to you that sleep is the one thing in the world 
perfectly impossible. I ’ve learned to curl up like 
a dog and sleep whenever I ’ve nothing else to 
do. It’s the best way in the world to keep fit. 
Well, go and rest, anyhow. Tell your orderly 
to call you in plenty of time. We shan’t take 
the air before seven at the earliest.” 

Dick went back to his quarters, flung himself 
on his cot, and tried to sleep. Useless! He 
would have been glad of Dan’s presence, but the 
big Minnesotan was on duty elsewhere. He tried 
to read, tried to write letters, tried to think of 
everything on earth except what lay before him, 
and finally succeeded in so tiring his brain that 
he actually fell asleep from sheer mental weari- 
ness, in spite of the tightness of his nerves. 

The next thing he knew his orderly was shak- 
ing him by the shoulder. 

“ Half-past six, mon lieutenant” he an- 
nounced cheerfully. 


CHAPTER XXI 
Number Twelve 

Dick found Godard already at the hangar, jok- 
ing with his companions while he adjusted the 
straps of his leather helmet. It was rapidly 
growing dark and there was no time to be lost. 
As Dick arrived, two of the wasp-like battle- 
planes roared up into the air, and three more 
sailed off while he and Godard were seating 
themselves in Number Twelve. 

Godard took the front seat and the controls 
and would handle the heavy gun which fired 
through the propeller. Dick’s weapon, an ordi- 
nary Lewis, was so mounted that it could be 
fired laterally, but not straight ahead, as the 
stream of bullets would infallibly hit the whirling 
blades of the propeller, to say nothing of flying 
dangerously close to the head of the man in the 
front seat. 

The two-seater was fitted with two devices for 
communication between the two members of its 
crew, so that they could talk to each other even 
while the motor was running. A light cord, 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


1 66 

which could be broken in case of need, was tied 
to each man’s wrist, and a flexible speaking-tube, 
the openings close to the men’s heads, stretched 
between them. 

It was a few minutes before eight o’clock when 
Godard raised his hand above his head, the 
mechanics stepped back, and the two-seater sped 
across the field and up into the air. 

The Captain began reaching for a high alti- 
tude before getting any distance at all. Even 
before they were actually over the front he had 
put Number Twelve up five thousand feet, and 
was still climbing. This was to be expected, as 
it was highly probable that cruising Zeppelins 
would stay up somewhere around eight or nine 
thousand feet, at least until reaching the neigh- 
borhood of their objective. 

“Ever seen a Zepp in the air?” Godard 
called back through the tube. 

“No.” 

“ Then don’t be looking for anything very big. 
Unless we’re pretty close, they’ll look small 
enough.” 

For the time being, Dick had no duties except 
to use his eyes. As soon as they reached the 
front, Godard began flying along the line of the 
trenches, occasionally winking a signal earth- 
ward so that no French batteries of anti-aircraft 


NUMBER TWELVE 167 

guns should start firing at the sound of his 
motor. 

An hour passed, during which they covered 
thirty or forty miles of front without seeing 
anything suspicious. They passed over some 
areas where night operations were in progress, 
and the spectacle was wonderful. They could 
see the red glare of the guns, the fiery blasts of 
the exploding shells, the flaring light of rockets 
and star-shells. Whenever they passed over one 
of these areas, Godard shot up to still loftier 
altitudes and switched off all his lights. 

“Looks as though the information is good,’’ 
he said, “ and that Zepps are coming across. All 
these little rows at different points are probably 
just designed to confuse us as to their real 
course.” 

It was nearly ten o’clock, and Godard had 
been working north for several minutes, when he 
swung around sharply and headed southwest. 

“We’ll edge in toward Paris,” he called. 
“Never find anything here in the dark, and the 
searchlights will be in full play over the capital.” 

Even in a machine as comparatively slow as 
was Nunber Twelve, they could make nothing 
of the distance in a straight line which lay be- 
tween them an$ Paris. Not more than twenty 
minutes had passed when they saw the first 


1 68 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


flickerings of a spectacle even more awesome 
than the artillery actions they had flown over 
earlier in the night. Paris, warned of the ap- 
proaching danger, was on guard. From every 
part of the great city batteries of huge search- 
lights were sweeping the skies. It was of course 
impossible to keep so huge a target hidden from 
the eyes of the raiders, and the city’s best defense 
was to keep all the sky overhead brightly lighted 
that the Zeppelins might be illuminated as soon 
as they appeared, and the gunners of the anti-air- 
craft batteries given a fair mark for their shells. 
Great fingers of light were raking the dark skies 
in every direction, and aeroplanes were darting 
this way and that like so many fireflies. 

Godard did not fly directly over the city, but 
swung wide in a half-circle and then came spin- 
ning in toward Paris from the southwest. Dick 
was a little surprised at such a maneuver: the 
obvious thing seemed to be to place themselves 
between the city and the German lines. A mo- 
ment later the Captain’s voice reached him in 
explanation. 

“ I ’ve an idea they may swing in from this 
side. If they should strike from the rear, they ’d 
probably go undiscovered for longer, and it 
would give them that much more time to drop 
bombs.” 


NUMBER TWELVE 169 

For some time they cruised this way and that, 
but all to no avail. The searchlights and the 
darting French planes seemed to have the air 
to themselves : there were no signs of the raiders. 
Then, far off in the general direction of Rheims, 
they saw the sky suddenly lighted up, evidently 
by the combined effects of artillery fire, flares, 
and searchlights. Godard shut off the motor and 
coasted. A faint, steady thunder of firing 
reached their ears. Number Twelve’s engines 
at once resumed their steady beat, and she began 
to climb. 

“ That looks like business ! ” cried the pilot. 

Driving straight toward this scene of activity, 
both men searched the darkness and the faintly 
lighted, drifting clouds of smoke for a sign of 
the raiders. Now indeed they had to climb, for 
the curving arcs and bursting shells showed that 
all over the country-side batteries of French guns 
were firing into the air, and a friendly shell was 
just as fatal as one from a hostile gun! 

“They’re certainly shooting at something!” 
Dick called through the tube. 

“ Probably sighted one and lost it again,” an- 
swered the Captain. 

Then, much closer to them, they saw a swarm 
of twinkling lights, almost at their own level. 
It looked precisely, Dick thought, like fireflies 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


170 

moving over a marsh, but he knew at once what 
the sight meant. One of the raiders had evi- 
dently been seen. French planes had darted upon 
it from all sides, the German had eluded them 

— being always able to rise much more rapidly 
than the heavier-than-air machines could follow 

— and the airmen were now hunting around for 
the vanished foe like eager hounds which have 
temporarily lost the scent of the fox. 

Dick expected his pilot to bore straight in and 
join this feverish hunt, but Godard, as always, 
preferred to play a lone hand. He evidently rea- 
soned that the Zeppelin, if it had been attacked 
and had escaped, had got clear by rising and 
then driving straight on toward its goal, so he set 
his engines to their greatest speed, simultaneously 
climbing and heading back toward Paris. 

Godard had now extinguished all his lights, 
even the ordinary red and green lights carried 
on the wings. This greatly increased the chance 
of possible collision with other planes, but at the 
same time it made Number Twelve’s course 
through the air much more nearly invisible to 
the crew of the Zeppelin, which might be any- 
where. Only the exhaust from her motor would 
betray her presence. Once or twice the motor was 
shut off and both men strained their ears, but 
in vain. The Zeppelin was undoubtedly moving 


NUMBER TWELVE 


171 

with engines muffled, in which case the only sound 
she made would be the hum of her propellers, 
and this would hardly be audible above the dull 
roar of distant firing and the sound of airplane 
motors on all sides of them. Obviously, they 
would have to trust to their eyes. 

And yet, when the thing came, it was rather 
through an inexplicable sixth sense. Dick did not 
actually see the vast shape, and yet, just at the 
instant that Godard tugged swiftly on the wrist- 
cord, Dick felt that the thing was there! He 
even realized more than this: he understood 
Godard’s purpose. The Zeppelin was so close, 
so completely at their mercy, that the “ ace ” was 
not trusting to the heavy gun mounted behind 
Number Twelve’s spinning propeller; he was go- 
ing to make sure of his antagonist by ramming 
her, deliberately plunging to destruction to bring 
down the huge foe with him! 

There was hardly time for Dick’s brain 
to record the impression of what was coming, 
no time at all for fright or horror, nothing but 
a swift, choking catch of the breath, then silence 
as the motor stopped and Number Twelve, low- 
ering her nose, swooped down precisely as a 
hawk folds its wings and strikes. 

In the few seconds of silence Dick caught 
the hum of vast spinning propellers, felt rather 


172 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


than saw a huge shape that seemed no more 
than a solid section of the surrounding dark- 
ness. It was in front of them, then suddenly 
vanished. A huge gust of air made the plane heel 
over and slur off to the side, then out of the 
darkness one of the Zeppelin’s guns spat at them 
spitefully. 

Godard had missed his stroke! The raider 
had risen just in time, so that the darting plane 
had flashed underneath, a scant few feet beneath 
the tail of the towering monster! 

Godard did not lose an instant. He wrenched 
at his controls with a violence which threatened 
destruction to the plane. His next move was 
again more like the instinctive action of a fight- 
ing bird than a human being. He knew that the 
great dirigible was above him, that he could not 
regain the advantage of the upper position. The 
Zeppelin had evaded his ramming thrust, but was 
not yet beyond the reach of the wicked weapon 
whose breech was under his hand. 

Even while Number Twelve was still quiver- 
ing from the strain which her sudden shift from 
a side-slip to a straight climb had put upon her, 
Godard began to shoot. 

Never before or afterward was Dick Allen 
to witness such shooting. It was not like the 
deadly, calculating accuracy he had seen Dan 


NUMBER TWELVE 


i73 

Ericsson exhibit in the tests. Godard’s target 
was invisible, the range unknown, the luminous 
sights of the gun of no use whatsoever. Again 
it was a case of instinct. The Frenchman’s mind, 
working like lightning, grasped instantly several 
different factors — the probable speed with 
which the Zeppelin had climbed, the question of 
whether she had continued to climb straight up 
or had struck off at a tangent, his own speed, the 
distance ahead of his flying mark that he would 
have to shoot. 

“Bang! bang! bang! bang!” the reports of 
the heavy gun ripped out steadily, far slower than 
the swift Lewis, yet sending their shells almost 
on each other’s heels. 

The American found himself almost uncon- 
sciously counting the sharp reports, — 

“ — nine — ten — eleven — twel — ” 

Then out of the blackness above and ahead of 
them came a single sharp flash, a pause, and then 
a bursting, roaring mass of flame that seemed to 
engulf them as thousands of cubic feet of gas 
were ignited. 

Dick saw for an instant the vast bulk of the 
wounded Zeppelin — the torn envelope, the 
flaming gas, the tilting cars, even the flashing 
guns as the men of the crew stuck to their posts 
to the end; then Number Twelve, struck by the 


174 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


force of the explosion as by a sudden gust of 
wind, heeled over, and fell off to one side in a 
prodigious side-slip. 

They must have fallen some hundreds of feet 
before Godard regained control. Once he had 
done so, however, he turned back to the night’s 
work as coolly as though the destruction of a 
great Zeppelin was the merest trifle. 

“One!” he called back through the tube to 
Dick, and turned Number Twelve’s nose once 
more toward Paris. 


CHAPTER XXII 

The Sausages 

“According to reports just brought in,” ex- 
plained Colonel Farle, putting the point of his 
pencil on a section of large-scale map which he 
had just spread out on the top of his desk, “ the 
Germans have established, at some distance be- 
hind their lines, a recently arrived battery of 
guns of large caliber. These guns have been 
located. At the moment, however, there are not 
available at this point any guns sufficiently heavy 
to meet these German pieces on even terms. 
Temporarily, we shall have to content ourselves 
with making these guns as nearly harmless as 
possible. 

“Somewhere between these two points” — 
his pencil indicated a village and a wood perhaps 
four or five miles apart — “are located the cap- 
tive balloons from which the spotting and range- 
correcting for these guns is done. There is no 
telling the hour of the day at which these guns 
will be in action and their observation-balloons 
in the air. This makes any attempt to destroy 
the balloons that much more difficult — and yet 


176 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

they must be destroyed within twenty-four 
hours ! ” 

He paused and glanced up. Lieutenants Allen 
and Ericsson, standing before the desk, their 
eyes following his finger upon the map, met his 
glance and nodded. 

“Yes, sir,” they said together. 

“ I need hardly add,” continued the Colonel, 
“ that while they are in the air these balloons are 
heavily guarded by the enemy’s combat-planes. 
The obvious method of destroying them is an 
attack in force, which is almost certain to fail, 
because the enemy would have ample time in 
which to draw down the balloons. A surprise 
attack seems the one method likely to succeed. 

“ Beginning to-day, we shall attack those 
4 sausages ’ every day until they are destroyed. 
The plan will be this : between certain hours the 
entire force of the squadron will be held in read- 
iness for this work. Upon the receipt of infor- 
mation that the balloons are in sight, the entire 
strength of the squadron, with the exception of 
your two planes, will make a demonstration in 
force, designed to draw off the combat-planes 
guarding the balloons. Immediately following 
the departure of the rest of the squadron, you 
will endeavor, by following some indirect course, 
to reach and destroy the balloons.” 


THE SAUSAGES 


177 

Again the Colonel paused and stared thought- 
fully at his map. 

“The first attempt, I think,” he continued, 
“ will be more likely to succeed than subsequent 
attempts, because the enemy’s suspicions will not 
yet be aroused. I have said that the balloons 
should be destroyed within twenty-four hours. 
I wish to repeat this statement, and to urge you 
to the greatest possible efforts upon your first 
attempt. Furthermore, please remember that 
the object of your expedition is the destruction 
of the balloons, and not the fighting of air-duels 
with hostile planes. These may be necessary, but 
they are not to be sought, and to be avoided if 
possible. 

“And finally, I need not remind you that in 
the eyes of the army the destruction of your two 
planes is of infinitely less consequence than the 
continued presence in the air of those observa- 
tion-balloons ! I have no suggestions as to the 
details of your attempt. You will see to it at 
once that your planes are in readiness. That is 
all!” 

Allen and Ericsson walked slowly down 
toward the hangars, discussing their plans. This 
was the first case in which the two Amer- 
icans had been given absolutely independent 
commands, and they were correspondingly 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


178 

elated. Dan made no bones of putting the de- 
vising of a scheme of attack wholly in Dick’s 
hands. 

“ Your head ’s worth two of mine for such a 
job,” he admitted frankly. “ Got it thought out 
yet? ” 

“Only along general lines,” answered Dick. 
“As the Colonel said just now, a surprise attack 
is the only one which has the slightest chance 
of succeeding. There ’s a chance that we might 
be able to just rush through and put the balloons 
out of business, but I don’t think it ’s better than 
a one-to-five shot. So I say go in as low as pos- 
sible.” 

“ Just how low do you mean? ” he asked. 

Dan blinked with surprise. 

“ Right down over the tops of the trees and 
the heads of the men in the trenches ! ” Dick said 
eagerly. “We’ll be gone before the men who 
have a shot at us realize that they ’ve had it, and 
if we can spot those balloons well enough so we 
can fly to them on a straight line, I believe we 
can turn the trick through sheer speed! ” 

They went down to the hangars, took out the 
two battle-planes assigned to them — tiny Nieu- 
ports with extremely small wing surface and 
powerful engines, tricky to handle, but capable 
of great speed — and rose into the air for short 


THE SAUSAGES 


179 

flights, diving and darting about to make sure of 
the mechanical fitness of the craft. 

The short test-spins finished, the two men re- 
turned to Headquarters, where they waited for 
word that the “ sausages ” were in the air to be 
sent in from one of the scout planes by wireless. 

One o’clock came, two o’clock, three o’clock. 
Reports of all sorts came in, but not the word 
for which they were waiting. By a quarter of 
four they had about given up hope, but just at 
that moment an orderly came out of the inner 
office with a hastily scrawled transcription of a 
wireless message, and handed it to Dick. 

“ Balloons rose, 3.26 p.m./ ; the message read, 
and then followed a jumble of figures, seemingly 
meaningless, but actually giving the exact location 
of the balloons on the staff maps carried by all 
the men. 

“That’s all we want to know,” Dick said, 
stuffing the message into a pocket of his leather 
coat. “We’ve got three hours of daylight, 
which ought to be more than enough. Come 
on!” 

Less than ten minutes later the engines of the 
two Nieuports roared, and the pair went aloft, 
Dick leading, Dan following at an interval of 
some two hundred yards. 

At almost the same time ten other planes rose 


180 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

from the field, and veered off in the other direc- 
tion to make the demonstration which might 
draw off the watchful Fokkers. There was a 
hurried waving of gloved hands from plane to 
plane as they went aloft, then Dick and his com- 
panion were alone, and the desperate game was 
on! 


CHAPTER XXIII 
The Long Chance 

The balloons, according to the information 
which had been received, were located in the 
Aisne valley between Neufchatel and Bour- 
gogne. It was Dick’s plan to cross the German 
lines at a point fifteen or twenty miles farther 
south, keeping eight or ten thousand feet high 
during this maneuver, strike boldly ahead until 
deep into the network of roads, supply-depots, 
etc., back of the German front-line and second- 
line positions, still keeping high, then, conceal- 
ing the maneuver as much as possible if he had 
kept fairly clear from pursuit up to this point, 
swing round and head back straight for the 
point where the balloons were stationed. 

Should he succeed in carrying out his plans 
to this point, great altitude would no longer be 
of any service to him; in fact, it would be, he 
felt, a distinct disadvantage, and he planned to 
begin creeping down toward the ground as soon 
as he had made his turn, counting upon the di- 
rection of his flight and the inconspicuous color- 


i 82 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ing of his tiny machine to conceal his true nature 
and purpose until too late. 

“ They won’t be very apt to do much shooting 
at two planes a dozen miles or so back of the 
front,” he reasoned, “ and probably three out of 
four men on the ground who see us will take us 
for Boche flyers. Once they know we ’re at large 
behind their lines, they’ll make things hum, but 
I’ve an idea that if everything goes well, that 
humming will be just a bit too late to save 
their ‘ sausages ’ ! ” 

At first everything worked without a flaw. 
Dick bored straight up into the air, the battle- 
plane being a quick riser, keeping at it until 
his altimeter showed a height of ten thousand 
feet. A glance over his shoulder showed him 
that Dan was keeping his place. 

Putting his plane on an even keel he began 
driving south and east, glancing from his map 
to the country below him. Only large landmarks 
were discernible, but he was fortunate in having 
a cloudless sky and was sufficiently familiar with 
the country beneath so that he had no trouble 
in locating his position. 

Ten minutes’ flying took him as far as he felt 
it necessary to go in a southerly direction, and 
he swung sharply to the north. 

At a rate of more than two miles a minute, the 


THE LONG CHANCE 183 

American was now driving into territory occupied 
by the Germans, and with every second his dan- 
ger increased. Believing that the sooner he 
turned and his plane was heading toward the 
Allied lines, the more likely he was to be taken 
for a German machine, he banked sharply and 
began to swing round, at the same time beginning 
to plane down toward the earth. 

Keeping on his course now became a more 
difficult matter, for he could trust nothing but 
his map and his flying instinct, as he was not at 
all familiar with the ground beneath him. And 
just as he glanced down to search the landscape 
for marks which would enable him to locate him- 
self definitely and so lay a straight course for the 
still invisible captive balloons, he noticed that 
there had been a sudden increase in the number 
of planes about him, knew that all these craft 
were hostile, and saw that several of them were 
heading toward him as though their suspicions 
had been aroused by his movements. Obviously 
the time had come for a swift descent. 

For the sake of avoiding shell-fire he would 
have preferred to keep up around five thousand 
feet, but the avoidance of dangers formed no 
part of his plan, and he descended until his 
altimeter showed no more than a scant fifteen 
hundred feet. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


184 

Just as he glanced at the gauge a shell ex- 
ploded in the air some distance to one side and 
considerably above him. A hidden battery of 
German high-angle guns had commenced reach- 
ing for him. 

Word that two hostile planes were flying 
about behind the front lines must have been sent 
broadcast throughout the German positions, for 
the fire was steady from all quarters. Some of 
the shrapnel burst uncomfortably close, and Dick 
could see two or three gaping rents in the Nieu- 
port’s wings, but no damage had yet been done, 
and he could see that Dan’s machine, too, was 
unscathed. 

Now, however, German planes were swoop- 
ing in toward them from all quarters, at least 
half a dozen being already in sight and more 
probably gathering, and Dick saw one of them 
loose a smoke-rocket that was undoubtedly a sig- 
nal for the batteries beneath to cease firing and 
leave the destruction of the raiders to the Ger- 
man airmen. 

Almost at the same instant that he realized 
that he and his companion were in for an air- 
battle, Dick caught sight of the swaying dots 
which he knew were the balloons. They were 
not more than four miles distant and at a height 
of perhaps twelve hundred feet. He let out a 


THE LONG CHANCE 185 

shout of delight, for he was much closer to his 
goal than he had believed. 

So absorbed was he by the sight of the float- 
ing gas-bags which he had come out to destroy 
that for an instant he forgot those sinister shapes 
sweeping toward him out of the sky, only to 
be rudely aroused to a consciousness of the 
real situation by the sudden staccato clatter of a 
machine-gun behind him, the reports just reach- 
ing him above the roar of his own motor. 

Now was the critical moment! 

In laying their plans beforehand, he and Dan 
had agreed that in case they were attacked be- 
fore reaching the balloons, his part would be to 
turn and endeavor to engage the attacking Fok- 
kers, while Dan, dodging the fight, was to plane 
down to the lowest height at which he dared fly, 
and head for the “ sausages ” at top speed. 

Just as he looked back, the other Nieuport, 
which had been behind and a little above him, 
plunged earthward with such appalling swift- 
ness that for an instant Dick thought it had been 
wrecked. Before he had more than time to 
think this, however, the tumbling plane righted 
itself, flattened out and went skimming forward. 
Dan had followed orders to the letter. 

There was no chance, however, to watch Dan. 
The same glance which had showed him the 


1 86 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


sudden earthward plunge of his companion had 
also revealed the spectacle of three German 
battle-planes bearing down on him. With a sud- 
den jerk on the “joy-stick” he turned to meet 
them. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
The Crippled Eagle 

As Dick swung to face the unequal struggle 
which might make it possible for Dan to carry 
out the rest of their programme, there flashed 
through his mind some words of advice that 
Musalle, one of the veterans of the squadron, 
had given him. 

“ For all purposes of ordinary flying,” the 
Frenchman had said, “loops, spins, and all the 
other fancy flying stunts are as out of place and 
foolish as it would be for a man to go from his 
house to his office turning handsprings instead of 
walking. But in combats, exactly the reverse 
holds true. 

“In a duel with another plane, your job is to 
make yourself as hard to hit as possible, and to 
outmaneuver your opponent so that you can con- 
tinually get at his ‘ blind angle ’ — where you can 
shoot at him and he can’t shoot at you. And in 
such a place, the man who can do the most and 
dizziest stunts is likely to come out the winner.” 


1 88 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Swerving sharply, he shot up and to the right 
at the same time. Dick’s first maneuver took 
the Germans somewhat by surprise, but at the 
same time it came near being his undoing. For 
the three German planes were above Dick when 
he started climbing, and his move took him into 
such a position that for a few seconds he made 
of himself and his plane the best possible target. 

Happily for him, the nearest of his pursuers 
was in such a situation that he “ blanketed” his 
two companions, and they could not fire, but the 
machine-gun of the foremost German broke into 
a clatter, and the air about Dick’s machine was 
full of angry, whistling sounds; but the German 
did not allow sufficiently for the speed with 
which his foe was rising, and the stream of bul- 
lets whistled underneath. 

Freed from this immediate danger, Dick tried 
to take the offensive. He plunged sideways 
toward the machine which had just fired at him, 
dived under him, slurred over in a side-slip that 
came within an ace of sending his plane out of 
control, and realized with a sudden thrill that 
he had won the coveted position: for an instant 
he was behind and below the Fokker, fairly upon 
the German’s “ blind spot ” ! 

His finger was already reaching for the but- 
ton which controlled the Lewis when the second 


THE CRIPPLED EAGLE 189 

German came darting at him from above and to 
the left. 

There was no time to risk a shot at the first 
German, hardly time to meet this second thrust. 
Shutting off his motor, Dick dived headlong, 
twisting to the right as he did so. Once more 
he succeeded; again he slipped through by a nar- 
row margin — and again he seemed to leap 
“ from the frying-pan into the fire,” for he 
eluded the rush of the second German only to 
come squarely into the range of his third foe, 
and this time he did not get wholly unscathed 
through the spray of steel bullets. 

As he won through, he saw that his left-hand 
wing had been fairly riddled, and he heard one 
of the wing-struts twang as though it had been 
struck, perhaps broken. 

There was an instant of terrible uncertainty, 
when he expected to have the Nieuport fail to 
respond to the controls, and go lurching off. But 
a few seconds served to show him that whatever 
injuries he had received had not yet done him 
serious damage. 

Temporary though his escape might prove, he 
knew that for the mement at least he could put 
more distance between himself and his foes, for 
their maneuvers had resulted in sending him 
climbing up and away in one direction while the 


190 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


three Germans were going the opposite way. 
For the moment Dick devoted his whole atten- 
tion to gaining height and distance. 

A scant twenty seconds was all the time that 
he had. At the end of this interval the trio were 
hard after him once more, and now they were 
acting with more caution and less haste. Instead 
of pursuing at his own level, one of them came 
straight behind him, a second climbed higher and 
to the left, while the third dropped lower and 
bore off to the right, all three of them commenc- 
ing to fire almost simultaneously. 

Dick’s position was one which could not possi- 
bly be maintained. Desperate measures alone 
could save him, and he had recourse to what is 
just about the “last ditch” for the overmatched 
airman. He deliberately “ faked a fall.” 

Pretending to fall before an audience of civil- 
ian spectators who know little or nothing about 
aviation is one thing, doing the same stunt so 
convincingly that it will fool hostile aviators is 
quite another matter. Dick had seen the trick 
worked by some of the men in the squadron, but 
he had never had occasion to attempt it himself. 
There is only one thing to do: the pilot simply 
throws his machine out of control, lets it drop 
as far as he dares, and then tries to re- 
cover himself, which sometimes is beyond his 


THE CRIPPLED EAGLE 


.191 

powers. The most skillful of the French bird- 
men employ the ruse not merely as a defensive, 
but as an offensive, measure, employing it to 
get them out of a bad situation and put them at 
the same time into a dominating position from 
which they can strike back before the enemy has 
time to realize that he is not witnessing a genuine 
fall. 

Dick had no hope of succeeding thus far. If 
the trick gave him another few minutes of com- 
parative safety, and he could jerk the plane back 
into control, he would be perfectly satisfied. 

He shut off his motor while turning, and went 
into a side-slip that would have scared the life 
out of him in the early training-days. As he had 
expected, the Nieuport went at once into a 
Straight nose-dive, then he felt the nauseating 
motion of the dreaded tail-spin. 

At the start of the maneuver he had had about 
two thousand feet altitude. With the Nieu- 
ports it is by no means as easy to regain control 
as with such machines as the big training-tractors, 
owing to the greatly decreased wing surface, 
and he knew that he dared not drop very far. 
Moreover, there was nothing that he could do : 
either the machine would straighten out or it 
would n’t. 

Those few seconds of uncertainty were the 


192 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


worst that Dick Allen had ever passed through 
in his life. He was dropping like a stone; he 
could see the earth rushing up toward him, and 
he was as helpless as though he had never been 
strapped into a plane before. Then, just as he 
had made up his mind that the plane would never 
right herself, he was aware that the spin was de- 
creasing. An instant later the machine straight- 
ened out; he started his motor, with a great rush 
of thankfulness, felt the wings again take hold 
of the air, and knew that he was once more the 
controlling force of the machine and not merely 
part of a swiftly falling weight. 

Not until that instant had he had a chance 
to glance about to note the success of his tactics. 
Now he risked a quick look over his shoulder. 
Two of the Germans, he saw, had evidently 
been fooled, for they had gone straight ahead, 
and were now at least half a mile beyond him 
and hundreds of feet above. 

But not so with the third Fokker! 

Instead of following his companions, he had 
tipped his elevating planes, and come down on 
a long slant that was timed to strike the Amer- 
ican just about the moment he recovered him- 
self! 

Without losing a second’s time in hesitation, 
Dick sent his plane through a loop — exactly 



w The disaster was complete ” 
























. 

. 






■ 













































































THE CRIPPLED EAGLE 


i93 


like the “ loop-the-loop ” of the circus performer 
a few years back — curving up and back until 
he was flying for a moment head-down above the 
earth, then heading straight down and plunging 
down like a stone. 

And the instant he headed downward, he 
pressed the button close to his right hand, and 
the Lewis gun mounted in front of him spewed 
out its bullets in a steady stream. 

He did not wait to aim, did not wait to see 
where his pursuer was. Before he made his loop, 
he had felt that it should bring him almost 
squarely above the Fokker as it flashed beneath 
him, and he fired without waiting to make sure 
that his feeling had been correct. 

Had he timed his action with a split-second 
watch it could not have been more deadly accu- 
rate. The German airman had no time to meet 
the move completely. He did try to escape by 
dropping, but this brought him squarely into the 
stream of bullets from Dick’s machine-gun. 

The disaster was complete — terrible for the 
man who had caused it and had to witness it. 
The German himself must have been struck 
more than once, for he crumpled down in his 
seat, then fell forward, while his propeller splinr 
tered, the plane turned half over, one wing 
crumpled as though it had smashed against an 


194 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


invisible barrier in the air, and the whole wrecked 
fabric plunged down, flaming as it fell. 

What might have happened had Dick been 
forced merely to deal with the other two planes 
which he had already engaged cannot be told. 
But while he was downing his first man, two 
other Fokkers had swept up, and one of them 
opened fire; and his fire took effect almost as 
quickly — but happily not so completely — as had 
Dick’s on the fallen Hun. 

Dick felt a sharp stab of pain through his 
left shoulder, there was a crack behind him, and 
his motor went dead. The fight was over! 

But the Nieuport did not fall. It no longer 
had the motive power to rise, but it began to 
plane earthward on a long slant. There was no 
chance of picking a landing-place, but at least 
he was spared the horror of the helpless plunge 
which would mean only destruction. 

He gave one glance at the earth below, tried 
to pull the nose of the machine around in the 
direction of the Allied lines, set his teeth and 
waited. 


CHAPTER XXV 
Prisoner 

No sooner had the crippled Nieuport started off 
on its long slant than the German planes began 
swarming in on it from all sides. There was 
nothing whatever for Dick to do but to hoist the 
airman’s signal of distress. 

So, while three Fokkers were darting at him, 
intent on finishing him off and sending him hur- 
tling to the ground, he let go of the controls and 
raised both arms above his head — the airman’s 
signal to friend or foe that his machine has been 
put out of action and that he is helpless. 

The effects of his signal of defeat were imme- 
diate. The three or four machines which had 
been swooping down upon him instantly changed 
their courses, and he was left to himself. Evi- 
dently the rule of the air was that if a beaten 
airman could save himself and his plane by 
gliding back to his own lines, it was the cour- 
teous duty of his conquerors to give him the 
chance. 

There followed several minutes of unpleasant 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


196 

uncertainty. As his descent continued, the Amer- 
ican soon discovered that clearing the German 
lines was out of the question. His concern was 
now to try to find a spot in which he could make 
a safe landing. 

Finally his anxious glance picked out an open 
space beneath him, comparatively free from ob- 
structions, and offering the best landing-ground 
in sight. To reach it he would have to go down 
at a sharper angle than he would have chosen, 
but beyond it there was a wide stretch of forest 
and a thicket-bordered stream which he doubted 
the plane’s ability to clear. 

He did everything in his power to break the 
force of the fall, wrenching at the controls to 
bring the plane against the faint wind that was 
blowing along the earth, but the ground came 
up very fast during the last few feet. The plane 
struck with a terrific shock that nearly tore Dick 
from his seat in spite of his life-belt. He had 
just time to be thankful that it had taken a huge 
“hop” instead of turning over, when it struck 
a second time, throwing him forward in his seat 
and making his head strike against a stanchion 
with such force as to render him unconscious. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

Behind the German Lines 

When Dick came to himself he was lying flat on 
his back on the earth and directly above him was 
the bearded face of a German surgeon. His glance 
took in several figures in the feldgrau uniform, 
and out of the corner of his eye he could see his 
plane. The wheels and landing-planes appeared 
to have been pretty well smashed, but otherwise 
the machine seemed uninjured. 

“Feeling better?” the surgeon was asking, 
speaking French and employing a curt but by 
no means unkindly tone. 

“ I think so,” answered Dick. “ I can tell when 
I try to stand up.” 

“ Better wait a few minutes,” suggested the 
German, offering him a flask. “You’ve had a 
stiff fall.” 

Dick did not believe that he had been badly 
hurt. His abdomen was sore where he had been 
held back against the force of his fall by the 
life-belt which kept him in his seat, one shoulder 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


198 

ached, and the old hurdling hurt in his foot was 
more than painful; but aside from these things 
and the inevitable headache there was nothing 
alarming. At the end of a few minutes he man- 
aged to stand up. As soon as he did so, 
everything spun crazily before his eyes, and for 
a few minutes he was violently sick. After 
that, however, he felt shaky but better. 

“You’ve suffered no real injuries,” the sur- 
geon told him. “ A couple of days and you ’ll 
be perfectly well. If your plane had gone a few 
feet farther, however, it would have been the 
end of you. It came very near turning com- 
pletely over.” 

A subaltern and four soldiers took Dick in 
charge. To his surprise the young officer apolo- 
gized to him in excellent French for the fact 
that he had to walk, and then accommodated his 
steps to Dick’s. It was no go, however, his legs 
refused to support him, and two of the soldiers 
had to take him by the arms. 

Dick was too ill and spent to take much notice 
of his surroundings, and realized nothing of what 
he passed through until they reached a row of 
rough wooden huts. He was taken into one of 
these, and fairly fell onto a narrow cot. The 
instant he stretched out he had a recurrence of 
the violent nausea. A few minutes of decid- 


BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES 199 

edly unpleasant semiconsciousness followed, then 
he fell into a heavy sleep. 

When he awoke the thoroughly “slept-out” 
feeling he experienced made him pretty sure that 
he had been asleep many hours. The nausea 
had entirely passed. He was sore and stiff, but 
otherwise perfectly himself — and tremendously 
hungry ! 

For the first time he had an opportunity to 
take stock of his situation. Even had he not 
already known it, the sounds which reached him 
would have told him clearly enough that he was 
close to the front-line German positions. A bat- 
tery of heavy guns was in action at no great 
distance from the spot where he lay, other bat- 
teries were firing farther off, and there were 
occasional bursts of rifle-fire, sufficiently loud to 
indicate that they were not far distant. 

His speculations were interrupted by a gruff 
challenge from the gray-clad sentry at his door. 
A moment later two young men in the uniform of 
German aviators, both still wearing their leather 
coats, entered the room. One of them, who 
spoke excellent English, at once came forward, 
begging Dick not to rise, and explaining that 
they had come to see how he was. 

“ I am Lieutenant Freihoff,” he explained, 
“ and this is Lieutenant Ertz. We had the honor 


200 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


of bringing your machine to earth yesterday. I 
hope your injuries are slight?” 

Dick, much surprised at the visit, said that 
they were, and that he suffered no discomfort. 

“If you will give us your name and unit,” 
Freihoff continued, “we will be glad to see that 
word of your safety reaches your friends.” 

Dick did as requested, then, not to be outdone 
in politeness, expressed the hope that the man he 
had sent down might have escaped — although 
he knew that there was little chance of it. 

“He was killed,” Freihoff answered stiffly, 
but without apparent resentment. “ Four of 
your bullets reached him. A most brilliant per- 
formance, Lieutenant Allen, most brilliant.” 

Dick, rather embarrassed at praise of this sort 
from his foes, tried to explain that it was more 
or less luck, — at least a last desperate effort made 
when he discovered that his opponent had seen 
through his ruse and outguessed him. The two 
Germans were silent for a moment, then Ertz 
said something in German to his companion, and 
Freihoff said: 

“Oh, to be sure! You will probably be glad 
to know that your companion succeeded in reach- 
ing his own lines.” 

“And the balloons?” Dick couldn’t forego 
asking. 


BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES 201 


The two Germans looked a trifle uncomfort- 
able, but played the game. 

“They were destroyed,” Freihoff admitted 
grudgingly; then his admiration for a fellow 
bird-man overcame his chagrin at the thought of 
defeat. “Never has such shooting been seen!” 
he declared. “Your man picked off those bal- 
loons as though he had been shooting at clay 
balls in a rifle-gallery ! ” 

Ertz, his broad face breaking into a rather 
pleasant grin, said something in German, speak- 
ing directly to Dick, and Freihoff translated. 

“Lieutenant Ertz wishes me to say that you 
have put upon us a heavy and agreeable task,” 
he explained. “ Within a week we shall consider 
it our duty to outdo your raid.” 

Then the pair of them saluted very stiffly and 
withdrew. 

Shortly after the two officers had left, a sol- 
dier brought Dick food. A few minutes later a 
lieutenant of infantry, followed by a couple of 
privates, came into the room, and ordered Dick 
to follow him. As soon as Dick had risen from 
his cot, the officer blindfolded him. 

“There is little chance that you will ever be 
able to tell your friends anything that you have 
seen,” he said in French, “but it is just as well to 
make sure that there is no chance at all.” 


202 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ Do you mind telling me what ’s going to be 
done with me?” Dick asked, “or is that one of 
the things I ’m not to know?” 

The German turned toward him. Had the 
bandage been removed from Dick’s eyes, he 
would have seen an unpleasant smile upon his 
captor’s face. 

“You are to be held here until late to-night,” 
answered the officer, “ and then sent back to the 
rear with the other prisoners.” 

There was something in the man’s tone that 
made Dick feel that he was expected to ask, 
“What other prisoners?” He did so. 

“Those that will be taken to-night,” the Ger- 
man answered confidently. “There are to be 
some trench-raids, on a rather large scale. It 
may interest you to know that the prisoners will 
be Americans ! ” 

To his great relief the German did not pursue 
the subject, and they went on in silence. With 
his eyes covered by a tight-fitting bandage and no 
knowledge whatever of his surroundings, Dick 
could not guess the direction in which he was 
taken, even in relation to the small wooden build- 
ing in which he had lain since his capture. 
Rather to his surprise the sounds of firing did 
not grow any less distinct, which led him to be- 
lieve that he was not being taken toward the rear. 


BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES 203 

After a few minutes of this he began to under- 
stand why the hearing of blind people seems de- 
veloped to an unusual extent. With his eyes 
covered it seemed to him that his ears were 
sharper than ordinarily. Even through the steady 
thunder of artillery firing he picked out many 
other sounds : a column of men marching some- 
where near him along a road and then crossing 
a narrow wooden bridge; a distant airplane 
motor overhead; the thudding of pick and shovel 
as a party of engineers worked on a new section 
of trench; the staccato clatter of a motor-cycle 
engine ; and everywhere about him guttural Ger- 
man voices. 

At the end of perhaps half an hour the subal- 
tern ordered his men to halt. The bandage was 
removed from Dick’s eyes, and he found him- 
self at what was evidently the entrance to a dug- 
out. 

The dugout — which appeared to be merely 
one of several — was only a few yards back of a> 
line of trenches. He thought he saw several ma- 
chine-guns in position. Off to the right was a 
large patch of woods, at least half a mile wide 
and fully as deep, the forward edge of which was 
undoubtedly held in force. In the other direc- 
tion the country seemed open. He saw a few 
trees whose branches had been lopped off and 


204 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


whose trunks were scarred in many places, clear 
enough proof that at some time or other this 
stretch of ground had been the target for heavy 
fire. He also saw several files of helmeted Ger- 
man infantry making their way forward at a 
double. 

This much he saw : the next instant one of his 
captors took him by the shoulder and he went 
into the dugout. 

Nothing that he had seen since his capture had 
astonished him as much as the interior of this 
dugout. It might have been a bomb-proof in a 
permanent fort somewhere in the interior of 
Germany. Its walls and roof were of concrete; 
there were well-built bunks for fifteen or twenty 
men, wooden racks for their rifles, a table, sev- 
eral chairs, and, most startling of all, two or 
three incandescent lights burning brightly! 


CHAPTER XXVII 

The Boomerang 

At the time of Dick’s entrance the dugout was 
full of men. A single glance showed him that 
serious work was indeed in prospect, and that 
these men were evidently to take part in the 
night’s activities. They were cleaning and oiling 
their rifles, putting better edges on their bayo- 
nets, and in a far corner two N.C.O.’s were in- 
specting an ugly-looking pile of hand-grenades. 

Dick’s hands were bound, although the officer 
made a point of asking him if the knot was too 
tight, but his feet were left free, and he was 
placed in a far corner of the room. His entrance 
attracted a good deal of attention. All of the 
soldiers looked at him curiously, seeming to have 
some trouble in reconciling his uniform, which 
was evidently French, and his face which was just 
as plainly not French. He caught two or three 
exclamations of “ Amerikaner ! ” 

The officer who had brought him saluted an- 
other officer, evidently in charge of the dugout, 


20 6 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


spoke a few words to him and then went out. 
Dick looked at this second officer, and was not 
at all pleased at the change. This man was more 
nearly the type Dick had expected, — a huge, 
broad-shouldered hulk of a man, with a thick, red 
face, heavy mustache, small eyes, and a distinctly 
unpleasant expression. He gave Dick a short 
glance, then turned away and for the time being 
paid him no further attention. 

Some minutes later, however, the officer had 
occasion to go near the place where Dick was 
sitting, his feet and legs sticking straight out in 
front of him, his back resting against the con- 
crete wall of the room. The big officer stepped 
squarely on one of Dick’s outstretched feet, 
stumbled, then spun round angrily. 

“ Keep your feet out of the way ! ” he snarled. 

“ Sorry,” Dick answered in English, since the 
officer seemed to speak it. “I couldn’t very 
well get farther out of the way, tied as I am.” 

“ Keep a civil tongue in your head, you dog! ” 
roared the other. 

Dick held his tongue for quite another reason, 
meeting the other’s gaze squarely. The German 
stood still, evidently trying to stare him out of 
countenance. Finding he could not do this he 
burst out: 

“ Do you intend to apologize, or don’t you?” 


THE BOOMERANG 


207 

Dick’s temper was rapidly getting out of 
hand, but he managed to hold it a little longer. 

“ I don’t intend to apologize any further,” he 
answered quietly. “You stepped on me inten- 
tionally, and you know it. So do your men! ” 

The officer turned and bellowed an order in 
German. Four of the soldiers rose, fixed their 
bayonets, and came forward. Dick had time for 
a quick glance at the faces which surrounded 
him. For the most part the men appeared de- 
lighted at the spectacle which was evidently in 
Store for them — the mistreatment of a pris- 
oner. Only two or three looked as though 
they found the sight anything but agreeable. 

“ Stand up ! ” commanded the officer. 

Dick scrambled to his feet and stood lean- 
ing against the wall. The officer stood for 
a few seconds measuring him, as though uncer- 
tain just what form to make the ordeal take, the 
four soldiers waiting expectantly behind him. 

“You flyers have been getting it too soft,” 
the German said at length. “It’s the first time 
I ’ve had my hands on one of you. It strikes 
me you ought to be able to tell more than any- 
body else. We ’ll just see.” 

At his order the four privates closed in, their 
bayonets only two or three inches from Dick’s 
breast. A glance at their grinning faces told 


208 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


clearly enough that they would cheerfully carry 
out any brutal order that was given them. 

The officer took out his watch and stood look- 
ing at it. 

“ I will ask a question,” he explained, “ and 
you will have fifteen seconds in which to answer 
it. If you refuse, these bayonets will press 
against you, not enough to hurt, just enough to 
show how they will hurt. Every fifteen seconds 
there will be another question. Every time you 
refuse to answer, the bayonets will press a little 
harder! 

“Now — I want the names of the regiments 
in this sector facing us ! ” 

Even had Dick been minded to answer, he 
could not have done so. It had been no part of 
his duties to keep any track of his own forces. 

It was so still in the dugout that the ticking 
of the watch in the officer’s hand was distincdy 
audible. The fifteen sconds passed. The officer 
nodded to his men, and they put their bayonets, 
none too gently, against Dick’s body. 

“Now — ” began the officer; then stopped 
suddenly as there was a ratde of arms at the 
entrance to the dugout, turned on his heel, and 
saluted. 

A second German officer entered. He was a 
man of entirely different type, tall, slender, with 


THE BOOMERANG 


209 


a thin, pale face, cold blue eyes, and a high fore- 
head. He looked on occasion as though he could 
be just as heartlessly cruel as the bully who was 
facing Dick, but there would be nothing petty 
about his cruelty. He might be capable of burn- 
ing a village, but he would not stoop to the tor- 
menting of a single prisoner. 

The newcomer evidently demanded an expla- 
nation of the situation, for Dick’s captor, who 
looked decidedly ill at ease, first pointed to his 
prisoner and then to the pile of hand-grenades. 
Either the explanation was satisfactory, or the 
superior officer was too busy to concern himself 
with such trifles. He spoke a few more sentences 
in rapid German, his inferior standing rigidly at 
attention meanwhile, then turned and went out. 

Grumbling, the big lieutenant called off the 
four men who surrounded Dick, then turned to 
his prisoner. 

“ I ’ll attend to your case later,” he said in 
the same unpleasant, snarling tone. “ At present 
I have to deal with a few of your friends.” 

Dick would have been wiser to have held his 
tongue as he had done, but he failed to do so. 

“ Better go slow,” he suggested quietly. 
“ They won’t have their hands tied, you know! ” 

With an oath the German swung his big arm. 
Had he taken the time to ball his hand into a 


210 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


fist, the force of the blow and the helplessness 
of his victim might have meant a serious injury. 
As it was, he struck with his open hand, and Dick 
was bowled over like a tenpin, but done no 
great hurt, save that he fell in such an awkward 
position, his roped hands beneath him, that he 
could hardly move. His sprawling downfall 
drew a roar of laughter from the soldiers. 

‘‘There! ” grunted the officer; “that saves us 
the trouble of tying the dog’s feet! ” 

And there Dick was left, like a sack of meal 
dumped down in a corner, while the men com- 
pleted their preparations. A few minutes later 
the officer and most of the men went out, leaving 
not more than half a dozen soldiers in the dug- 
out. One of these took up his post at the en- 
trance, while the others squatted on the floor and 
commenced* playing cards, paying no attention 
to their prisoner. 

As Dick could see by glancing through the 
open doorway, it had now grown perfectly dark 
outside. There had been, ever since he entered 
the dugout, a steady rumble and mutter of firing. 
Within a very short time it became clear enough 
that this was no mere part of a stereotyped daily 
programme, for not only did every German bat- 
tery in the vicinity seem to be firing, but this fire 
was evidently being returned with interest. 


THE BOOMERANG 


2 1 1 


The men gathered in a huddled group at one 
side, evidently discussing the situation among 
themselves, although Dick could hear nothing of 
what they said. 

How long the ordeal of the bombardment: 
continued he had no means of telling. There 
was a watch with a luminous dial strapped round 
his wrist, but he could not see it. He had made 
repeated efforts to loosen the rope which bound 
his hands, but the knots had been too well tied. 
Not long after the shells commenced banging 
down around the line of bomb-proofs, the elec- 
tric system had been put out of commission and 
the lights had gone out. The imprisoned sol- 
diers had produced two or three candle-ends, and 
in this flickering and uncertain light they had 
waited for the end. He could not form any idea 
of what was actually taking place outside. 

But convincing proofs of what was happening 
were soon furnished! 

The heavy door which covered the entrance 
to the dugout was suddenly wrenched open, and 
through the opening tumbled and sprawled a 
stream of men. In the feeble, flickering light 
of the candle-ends they looked unreal and gro- 
tesque. All of them wore the German trench- 
helmets, while a few had put on their gas-masks. 
Some were wounded. 


212 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


It was Dick Allen’s first sight of men who had 
just been subjected to the terrific strain of with- 
standing shell-fire for hours, and he understood 
at once that there were worse things than air- 
duels fought thousands of feet above the earth. 

Some time later he realized that the awful 
clamor outside had grown somewhat less, and 
once it had begun to diminish, it fell away swiftly, 
only to be succeeded by other sounds. Now he 
could hear the crack of rifles, the sinister purr- 
ing of machine-guns, thudding explosions that 
he knew were grenades, and the faint sounds of 
cheers and shouts. 

For a few seconds, so stupefied and deadened 
had his senses been by the nerve-racking bom- 
bardment, he did not comprehend the signifi- 
cance of these sounds; then in a flash he under- 
stood. 

It was the assault following the bombard- 
ment! Allied troops — perhaps Americans — 
had penetrated the German lines! The Boche 
raid had indeed proved a boomerang of the live- 
liest sort! 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
The Two Captives 

Quickly succeeding the thrill accompanying the 
realization that Allied forces had taken the 
German position came an equally sharp thought 
of a far less comforting sort. 

His own situation, bad enough at best, had 
actually become worse through the presence of 
his friends ! He was only too familiar with the 
process of “mopping up” captured trenches 
and dugouts, and he knew that the Allied troops, 
made cautious by repeated bits of German trick- 
ery and faithlessness in the past, took no chances 
of being shot or stabbed in the back by foes who 
had made a pretense of surrendering. Unless 
he could make his presence in the dugout known 
in time, Dick stood an excellent chance of being 
bombed by his own men ! 

No time was left him for the hurried devis- 
ing of a plan. There came a series of scattering 
blows at the door of the dugout, the heavy tim- 
bers splintered and gave way, and a pencil of 


214 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


light from an electric torch began probing 
around the interior of the underground room. 

“Come up out of that — understand?” 
shouted a voice in English. 

Dick’s heart gave a bound. No native of the 
British Isles ever spoke with just that accent. 
The victorious troops were Americans! 

At the sound of the voice from the doorway, 
several of the demoralized Germans staggered 
to their feet, their hands above their heads. 

“ Kamerad! Kamerad /” they shouted in 

token of surrender. 

“That’s all right! But you’ll come out one 
at a time, and with both hands in the air! ” said 
the voice at the door. 

An instant later another voice, speaking what 
Dick guessed was very poor German, evidently 
repeated the command. 

Several of the soldiers, their hands still in the 
air, were moving toward the door, when Dick 
saw the same officer who had bullied him begin 
to creep forward, an ugly-looking grenade in 
each hand. 

“ Look out above ! ” shouted Dick. 

There was an instant’s pause. The big officer 
turned with an oath, evidently inclined to hurl 
one of the grenades at Dick. Before he could 
put this purpose into effect, however, he was 


THE TWO CAPTIVES 


215 


beset from an unexpected quarter. Another 
German officer, whom Dick had not before 
noticed, suddenly flung himself upon the big man 
and attempted to take the grenades away from 
him. He was no match for his antagonist in 
point of strength, and it might have gone badly 
with him had not several of the soldiers, com- 
prehending the situation and anxious only to give 
themselves up, come to his assistance. In a few 
seconds the big man was disarmed, and the other 
officer turned to the door. 

“There are twenty-six men and two officers 
here,” he called, “as well as one prisoner. We 
will come out one at a time, as you say.” He 
turned to the cowering soldiers. “V orwarts!” 
he commanded, and one by one they began to 
file out of the bomb-proof. 

A few minutes later Dick found himself in 
the midst of a group of big, brown-clad infantry- 
men, who were acting more like a lot of big boys 
enjoying a Hallowe’en prank than anything else. 
Dick espied the two silver bars of a captain glit- 
tering on one brown shoulder, and turned to the 
officer at once. 

“You aren’t by any chance Lieutenant Allen, 
are you?” the infantry captain asked. 

“Yes, I am,” answered Dick. 

“Well, this is luck!” exclaimed the other. 


21 6 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“We were told to keep an eye out, as your ma- 
chine was seen to go down somewhere in this 
quarter. My name’s Bramwell, and I ’m mighty 
glad to have been the man to find you.” 

“You’re not half as glad as I am!” Dick 
answered heartily. 

“By the look of you,” Captain Bramwell 
said, “ you have been through it ! I’m going to 
send back this batch of prisoners under guard. 
I ’ll send you along if you like.” 

Dick agreed willingly, and a few minutes later 
was on his way back toward the Allied lines. 
The prisoners were in charge of a subaltern who 
introduced himself as Lieutenant Black, and as 
they picked their way back through the broken 
ground of the captured position, and then of 
No Man’s Land, he got Dick’s story out of him. 
When Dick told him of the attempt at torture 
which had been cut short earlier in the night, and 
of the big German officer’s attempt to get hold 
of the hand-grenades later when his men were 
anxious only to give themselves up, Black said 
angrily : 

“You mean we ’ve bagged that brute in this 
lot?” 

“Yes.” 

“Which is he?” 

Dick pointed out the hulking figure, conspicu- 


THE TWO CAPTIVES 


217 

ous even in the faint light. Black was silent for 
a few minutes ; then he said thoughtfully : 

“ There are times when a fellow almost wishes 
we did some of the pretty tricks the Germans 
do. I ’d like to see that devil get what ’s coming 
to him I ” 

“ So would I ! ” agreed Dick. 

“ But of course we can’t,” Black went on, “ as 
the American army doesn’t make a practice of 
mistreating its prisoners. But it does get under 
your skin to know that a bullying brute like that 
will get decent treatment when what he deserves 
is a whole lot more than he gave you! ” 

A short time afterwards they entered the 
Allied lines, held at this point by French troops 
with a sprinkling of American regiments. Dick 
was only too glad to accept Black’s offer of a 
shakedown in his quarters, which proved to be 
in a huge cellar beneath the battered remains of 
a French village that was included in the lines 
at this point. Eight or ten American officers 
were in the room when Black and his companion 
entered, and Dick was in for a good deal of 
hearty hand-shaking and congratulation as soon 
as the others learned what had happened to 
him. Finally Black, dropping a hand on to 
Dick’s shoulders, pushed the others off. 

“ See here, you fellows, let Allen alone ! ” he 


2l8 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


protested. “After what he’s been through I 
guess he wants to sleep, even if to-night’s attack 
takes us clear to Berlin! ” 

When Dick opened his eyes several hours 
later, Black and one other man were the only 
ones in the cellar. Black came forward as soon 
as he saw that Dick was awake. 

“ It was all I could do to keep from routing 
you out just after you ’d tumbled in last night,” 
he said. “If you hadn’t looked so thoroughly 
done up, I think I should have done it anyhow.” 

“Why?” Dick asked. 

“ Because,” explained Black, “ a few of us had 
a chance to witness what must have been just 
about the strangest affair that’s happened since 
the war began, and you were the one man above 
all others who should have seen it.” 

“ I don’t understand,” Dick said. 

“Not long after you’d tumbled in,” Black 
went on, “ a soldier came to me with word that 
one of the captured German officers wanted 
to see me. As you may guess, I hadn’t the re- 
motest idea what it was all about, but as I was 
in a way responsible for the prisoners until they 
were off my hands, I went to see what was up. 
You know there was a second German officer in 
that bunch? ” 

“Yes,” answered Dick, “a good-looking, slim 


THE TWO CAPTIVES 


219 


fellow. He ’s the one that jumped the big fel- 
low when he started after those grenades.” 

“That’s the one. Well, it seems he’s no 
more than half a German, which accounts for 
his virtues. He’d been living in America, ancj 
came back to Germany at the outbreak of war 
because of a sense of duty. Wouldn’t have 
fought against the United States, he says, but 
it was too late to get out when we came in. 

“ He heard you and me talking last night 
about what we’d like to do to that big brute 
that started sticking bayonets into you. And 
what do you suppose he had to propose to me? 

— That I let the pair of them fight a duel! ” 

“ A duel ! ” exclaimed Dick. 

“Just that. This little chap — Schall, his 
name is — said that he considered this other 
man’s conduct an insult to the German army; 
that he realized the fact that none of us could 
resent it in the proper way, and that he ’d con- 
sider it a privilege to take a service sword and 
put a hole through Drasch, which is the big 
one’s name. 

“Of course I told him we couldn’t do that 

— and I wish you could have seen the fellow’s 
face. He was in deadly earnest. He felt a lot 
worse over that business than you did. Finally 
I said, ‘ See here, we can’t stand for any duel, but 


220 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


if you and Drasch can settle this with your 
fists, I ’ll see what I can do.’ Then he bright- 
ened up a whole lot.” 

“You don’t mean you actually did it?” 

“We did just that!” Black assured him 
“The two officers had been confined separately 
from the men, and it was easy enough to find 
a cleared place back of the lines where nobody 
would disturb us. Six of us went along to see 
fair play. 

“And don’t think it was just a lark, or that 
we pulled it off for the pleasure of seeing a couple 
of Huns pound each other. That young Schall 
was the most deadly serious thing you ever saw 
in your life ! He made us feel that what he was 
doing was for the sake of every good quality 
that the German race possesses, and that he 
didn’t want us to think that he was like Drasch, 
or that Drasch was a typical German officer.” 

“What happened?” Dick asked. 

“ Why, in about ten minutes little Schall had 
big Drasch on his knees blubbering for mercy. 
Schall made him apologize to both armies be- 
fore he ’d let him get up ! I know it sounds rather 
silly now to talk about it, but if you’d seen it 
you ’d understand that it was about as far from 
silly as anything on earth could be. 

“I’ll tell you, if there’s one man on earth 


THE TWO CAPTIVES 


221 


I ’m really sorry for, it ’s the chap like Schall 
who has German blood, wants to be proud of 
his race, and yet is ashamed of everything he 
sees his people do ! ” 

For many reasons Dick would have been glad 
to stay in the cellar under the ruined French 
village. The strain of the past few days, com- 
bined with a heavy cold which he had contracted, 
made him very wretched, and he felt that the one 
thing he really wanted was to get into bed and 
stay there as long as he pleased. Then, too, 
there was a great deal of comfort in being 
thrown again with his own countrymen and hear- 
ing nothing but good “American.” 

But in his present situation he was of no value 
to anybody, and it was his duty to get back to his 
unit with all possible speed. So after a hearty 
meal he said good-bye to Black and some of the 
other officers, and started for the rear in the 
side-car of a motor-cycle. 

During the rest of that day arid part of the 
night he spent his time getting back by various 
ways to the Aviation Headquarters in the bat- 
tered chateau. 

It was not in any sense a pleasant journey. 
Dick Allen was by this time a pretty sick man, 
and his interest in anything but getting to the 
end of his journey very slight. 


222 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


But nothing really mattered or counted until 
he found himself, utterly spent and weary, hold- 
ing himself upright before Colonel Farle’s desk 
as he made his report, and wishing that he dared 
catch hold of the desk so that standing would 
be an easier matter. 

When he had finished his brief recital of what 
had happened to him, Colonel Farle rose and 
put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. 

“In a few days,” he said, “we’ll consider 
this report. At the present moment the place 
for you is a cot in a hospital, and I ’m going to 
see that you get there before you ’re an hour 
older!” 


CHAPTER XXIX 

The Spy 

“ You 're a pretty washed-out looking speci- 
men, n Dan Ericsson said as he and Dick shook 
hands in the outer room at Headquarters. 

It was the first day of Dick’s return to active 
duty after ten days on his back in the hospital, 
and the first time he had seen Dan since he had 
glanced down from the seat of his Nieuport to 
see the Minnesotan planing swiftly earthward 
beneath him. 

“I suppose I do look a bit knocked up, but 
I ’m fit enough,” Dick answered. “ I had no 
idea what a field-hospital was like. I thought 
it was a place where you were sent to be siclc 
comfortably and luxuriously. It ’s nothing of the 
sort! It’s a place where they bully and feed 
you into getting well much faster than you want 
to ! Why, if I ’d had one foot in the grave, those 
doctors and nurses would have had me back in 
harness in no time! ” 

“Sure,” agreed Dan; “if this war doesn’t 
teach us anything else, it will have taught us that 


224 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

we’ve been wasting altogether too much time 
being sick.” 

“Anyhow, never mind! me and my sickness 
now,” Dick said. “I want to know what hap- 
pened to you.” 

“Why,” Dan replied briefly, “I went ahead 
and knocked the sausages out of their skins ! ” 

Dick laughed heartily. 

“ That ’s like you ! ” he exclaimed. “ You tell 
it in one sentence while another man would take 
an hour to the story.” 

“ It is n’t worth more than a sentence,” in- 
sisted Dan; “ it was really the easiest stunt I ’ve 
been set since I reached the front. Between 
the Colonel’s diversion with the other planes and 
your idea of swinging in from the rear, the Huns 
were completely fooled. 

“After I saw that you were hung up with 
those three Fokkers, and looked good to keep 
busy for a few minutes, I carried out orders and 
went for those balloons full speed, flying as low 
as I dared. It sounds incredible, but absolutely 
nothing happened to me ! The Germans on the 
ground evidently thought I belonged to their 
own crew until it was too late, and for just those 
few precious minutes there weren’t any Ger- 
mans overhead. 

“ Of course, when I began shooting, they went 


THE SPY 


225 


after me with shrapnel from the ground, but it 
was nothing serious. Potting those big balloons 
was a cinch compared with those toys we popped 
at in training-camp. I was back here four hours 
after we started, turning the organization of the 
Allied forces inside out to find out what had 
become of you! ” 

In spite of his boasts that he was perfectly fit 
for immediate service, Dick’s appearance failed 
to convince Colonel Farle that he was ready for 
anything, and he put in three long weeks recuper- 
ating at Headquarters before he again strapped 
himself into the seat of a plane. 

It was, then, with a feeling of great relief 
and satisfaction that he heard Colonel Farle say 
one morning: 

“You look fit for active duty again, Allen.” 

“ I ’m sure I am, sir.” 

“You’ve been sure of that these two weeks 
and more,” answered the Colonel with a smile, 
“but now I guess you’ve actually arrived at the 
point where you can fly without needing an extra 
life-belt!” 

He paused and fumbled with some papers on 
his desk. 

“ How deep into German territory have you 
ever flown?” he asked. 

“ More than fifty miles, sir.” 


226 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ In which direction? ” 

“Toward the Belgian-Luxemburg frontier, 
sir. I was actually over the Belgian territory 
for some time.” 

“ That was with a large force or alone? ” 

“Alone, sir.” 

“I want you to make another flight,” ex- 
plained the Colonel, “ except that this time you 
will carry a passenger. We want to land one 
of our spies same distance in the rear of the 
German lines. I want the same man to take 
him across to-night and to bring him back in 
about four days’ time. Both trips, of course, 
will have to be made at night. 

“You will report to me at seven o’clock this 
evening. Until then you are relieved from duty. 
By the way, the spy is to be landed in the neigh- 
borhood of Vouziers. All the maps are at your 
disposal.” 

Promptly at seven o’clock that night Dick 
presented himself at Headquarters. During the 
afternoon he had spent some time at the hangars, 
assuring himself that the powerful two-seater in 
which he would make the flight was ready for 
the journey. 

In Colonel Farle’s office at Headquarters, Dick 
found the spy. He was prepared to see a rather 
theatrical-looking figure, something like a stage 


THE SPY 


227 


detective. The instant he looked at the man sit- 
ting in the chair against the wall, he realized 
that the modern spy must be just as inconspicu- 
ous as the modern soldier. 

This man surely filled that requirement. He 
was of average height and size, smooth-shaven, 
without a single unusual feature or distinguish- 
ing characteristic, and his clothes, which were 
those which would be worn by any European of 
the middle class, would not attract attention any- 
where. In a word, he was exactly the sort of 
man one could see every day for a month, and 
yet completely forget over night. 

“This,” explained Colonel Farle shortly, “is 
M. Lenor, whom you are to convey to his desti- 
nation.” 

M. Lenor acknowledged the brief introduc- 
tion by a bow, and resumed his study of the wall 
opposite his seat. Colonel Farle unrolled sev- 
eral sections of ordnance maps and picked up a 
pencil. 

“ If you gentlemen will draw up your chairs,” 
he proposed, “ suppose we go over the ground a 
little in advance.” 

For fully three quarters of an hour the three 
men bent intently above the maps. 

It was nearly nine o’clock when Dick and 
Lenor went down to the hangars. There was 


228 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


little delay in starting. Dick made a hasty reex- 
amination of the plane, saw to it that the sketch- 
maps with which he had been provided were 
within easy reach, and that the speaking-tube con- 
necting the two seats was in order. Then he and 
the spy took their seats, Dick raised his hand in 
signal, and the plane swept across the field and 
into the air. 

Had it not been for the fact that Lenor was 
suddenly moved to begin talking, the flight of 
more than a hundred miles would have passed 
uneventfully enough. 

They rose to a height of between eight and 
ten thousand feet, then Dick set a line for his 
goal and steered for it by compass. He was 
intent only on driving, and watching the air about 
him for the first sign of hostile planes, when 
Lenor’s voice suddenly came to his ear through 
the tube. 

“ Doubtless you scorn me because I am a spy,” 
the man said abruptly. “ All soldiers do. I do 
not blame them. It is not a pleasant business, not 
at all like the work of a soldier. For the most 
part I say nothing about what I do, for, after 
all, it is only my own concern and that of those 
who employ me. But now and then, when I see 
contempt for me in a soldier’s face, I like to tell 
him why I am what I am.” 


THE SPY 


229 


“ You needn’t,” Dick said, rather embarrassed 
by the other’s frankness. “ I feel no contempt 
for you. Not all men would have the nerve for 
your work! ” 

“That is very kind, monsieur,” Lenor said 
gratefully, “ but the feeling is there in your mind 
just the same. I saw it in your eyes when Col- 
onel Farle told you who I was.” 

And then, as Dick sent the plane humming 
on its way across that part of France held by 
the foe, Lenor told his story. 

He was a native of Saarburg in Lorraine, and 
so had been born and raised under German rule, 
although both his parents were French, and all 
his sympathies were with the French people. 
Because of physical disability he had been spared 
the hateful task of serving his time in the Ger- 
man army. He had been employed as a travel- 
ing salesman by a big German concern of 
leather manufacturers. 

“ No training,” he said, “ could have been bet- 
ter for a spy. France, Germany, Holland, Bel- 
gium, Northern Italy, Switzerland, and even 
parts of Austria — I have been all over them 
again and again. You cannot find a bit of railroad 
track over which I have not ridden, cannot find 
on a big map a town so small that I have not at 
least passed through it.” 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


2&0 

Being a rather keen student of current affairs, 
Lenor had seen the approach of war, and had 
left Saarburg before the French frontier was 
closed. Knowing that he could not fight, but 
that his knowledge of the country might be of 
some service to the Government, he had at once 
offered his services. 

“A long time, monsieur, I was that most 
miserable of all creatures — a spy not trusted 
by the Government which employs ’ him,” he 
said. “ My services were accepted, I was given 
work of no consequence, but the fact that I was 
a German subject — which I did not attempt to 
conceal — counted heavily against me. I was 
watched. I could not take a step without other 
men following me. 

“From late in August, 1914, until late the 
following spring, I was not allowed to set foot 
outside of Paris. Since then, however, I have 
been active all the time, and I like to believe that 
I have done some little good, and that I have 
done some things better than other men could 
have done them.” 

“ I should like to hear about some of them,” 
Dick said thoughtlessly. 

There was a slight pause; then Lenor said: 

“Doubtless, monsieur; but that may not be. 
About himself a spy may talk as much as he 


THE SPY 


231 


pleases, but of tbe things that he does, no! If you 
were to let slip a word that I had been wagging 
my tongue, some one else would hear about it. 
Before many days, I should learn that the Gov- 
ernment had no further use for my services. A 
little later, for no apparent reason, I should be 
arrested, and probably I should remain in prison 
until the war was finished! 

“ I will tell you, monsieur, if, after the war, 
you will come to the little leather-goods shop 
which I hope one day to set up in Paris; I will 
tell you everything! ” 

From time to time Lenor’s story had been 
Interrupted, and on several occasions Dick had 
flown in wide circles or planed down closer to 
the ground while they made sure of their where- 
abouts. As long as they were over ground held 
by the Allies, it was all plain sailing. There 
were innumerable signal-lights visible, as easy 
for Dick to read as are the switch-lights of a 
freight-yard for a locomotive engineer. 

And when they were over soil which, though 
French, was in German hands, Lenor’s store of 
peculiar information took on a new value. Sig- 
nal-lights which meant nothing to Dick had 
some significance for the spy. Time and again 
he would say: 

“There is a flying-field, monsieur; best per- 


232 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


haps to shut off the motor and plane for a 
ways ! ” 

Or his comments would take another form : 

“ Aha ! ” he exclaimed once, “ they ’ve moved 
the big ammunition dump that was down there 
ten days ago! At least the lights have been 
changed! ” 

Perhaps two hours after they had left the 
ground, Lenor, who had been studying the 
ground beneath him very intently for some 
moments, said: 

“ I think, Lieutenant, we had better go down 
a bit. We should now be where the signals will 
be visible. You have them in mind? ” 

“I think so,” answered Dick. “Three white 
flashes after I have shown my lights means 4 All ’s 
well! Descend!’ A blue flash means ‘Wait!’ 
Repeated red flashes mean to give up the at- 
tempt and return to our own lines. Am I right ? ” 

“ That is correct,” answered Lenor. 

Following his companion’s suggestion, Dick 
brought his machine down toward the earth in 
wide circles, one eye on the altimeter, the other 
watching the air around him. If anything mis- 
carried, he did not want to be caught at a low 
level, with a forced and hurried flight, or with 
a fight on his hands in the darkness above urn 
familiar ground. 


THE SPY 


233 

“Now the lights, if you please!” called 
Lenor. 

Dick leaned forward and turned a switch on 
the dash. Instantly there winked out on the under- 
side of the landing-plane a row of alternate 
blue and white lights, especially installed for the 
occasion. Dick switched them off again at once, 
waited a minute, and switched them on again. 

“We are perhaps too early,” suggested the 
spy. “In ten or fifteen minutes, let us repeat 
the attempt.” 

Dick circled warily, coasting with a silent 
motor as much as he could. Ten minutes later 
he repeated his signal. He did not see himself 
the answering flashes from the ground, but 
Lenor’ s quick exclamation told him that the spy 
must have seen them. 

“Ah!” exclaimed Lenor. “The three white 
flashes. All is well! Monsieur, the ground 
immediately to the left is excellent for a landing. 
But I beg you to be quick! ” 

Dick wasted no time, and a few minutes later 
the plane dropped to earth as softly as a bird. It 
was rather nervous work in the darkness, igno- 
rant of what lay beneath him, but he had the 
utmost confidence in Lenor’s word. 

Hardly had the machine alighted when Lenor, 
carrying only a small wicker crate containing 


234 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


three carrier-pigeons, was over the side. Two 
or three indistinct figures appeared in the dark- 
ness. 

“All right, monsieur !” Lenor said in a low 
voice. “ In four days’ time, then, at the railroad 
bridge we have agreed upon?” 

“ Right ! ” replied Dick. “ Good luck ! ” 

An instant later his motor roared, and he 
was on his way back to the Allied lines. The 
whole flight had seemed as peaceful and unevent- 
ful as a practice-flight at home ! 


CHAPTER XXX 

^The Work Goes On! 

Nothing of any consequence happened in the 
course of the return journey. Several times Dick 
knew that he was being followed by German 
planes, as he saw their lights, but the eluding of 
pursuit in the darkness was too simple a matter 
to give him any concern. 

Not more than six hours all told elapsed from 
the time he and Lenor were closeted with Col- 
onel Farle until he was getting out of his flying- 
togs and making ready for bed. 

Dick had some considerable flying of different 
sorts to do during the next four days, but none 
of it was in any way remarkable, and he was 
awaiting with real interest his flight into cap- 
tured territory to endeavor to pick up Lenor and 
bring him back with his recently acquired in- 
formation. 

Two days later, Colonel Farle spoke to Dick 
in the outer office at the chateau. 

“ Hold yourself in readiness for Friday 
night,” he said. “One of Lenor’ s pigeons has 
flown in. He brought word that everything was 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


236 

going smoothly and that your friend will be at 
the rendezvous.” 

Two nights after this, in the same plane which 
he had used on the former occasion, Dick again 
rose from the flying-field and started on his 
lonely flight over captured territory. 

This time his task was far more difficult, — so 
difficult, in fact, that arrangements with the spy 
had been made in advance so that he was to 
be at the appointed place on three succeeding 
nights, in case Dick failed to reach it on the first 
attempt. Dick had to make the flight relying 
entirely upon his own knowledge and instincts, 
and without Lenor’s assistance. He was com- 
pletely equipped with every variety of map that 
would be of any assistance, but in night-flying all 
maps have their limits, and none of them are 
of the slightest use once the aviator is thoroughly 
at fault. 

Lenor was not to be picked up at the same 
point at which Dick had left him four days pre- 
viously. The point agreed upon was a certain 
railroad bridge some six or eight miles in the 
rear of the German lines. The bridge itself was 
in constant use, as the railroad which passed over 
it was a great feeder for the German forces, and 
this meant that the place would be heavily 
guarded by the enemy. 


THE WORK GOES ON! 237 

Naturally the actual point chosen for Dick’s 
landing was not at the bridge proper, but in a 
field some hundreds of yards distant from it, and 
well removed from the line of the railroad. 

Knowing that there was an excellent chance of 
his going wrong several times in the course of 
the sixty-mile flight, Dick had made the ear- 
liest start consistent with safety, and allowed 
himself a comfortable margin of time. Over- 
confidence made him careless, and he suddenly 
realized that he was lost. 

Instead of wasting time in trying to set him- 
self right by uncertain means, he got the points 
of the compass straight, and retraced his course 
until he was absolutely certain, then tried again. 
This time he flew lower and used his eyes like 
a veritable hawk. He had the satisfaction this 
time of picking up, one after another, several 
salient features of the country, visible even in 
the darkness, on which he had counted. 

For several minutes he had been following 
the line of a stream — the same stream over 
which the bridge passed. For the most part 
the river flowed through open meadow-land, and 
was quite plainly visible. At times woods and 
thickets along its banks made it much harder to 
distinguish. 

Suddenly, to Dick’s astonishment, he found 


23 8 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

that there were two streams instead of one below 
him! 

“Funny!” he muttered. “I don’t remember 
any fork in the course of that stream on the 
map ! ” 

He did the one thing which seemed wise, 
glancing uneasily at his watch as he began the 
experiment — he followed first one branch of 
the stream and then the other, hunting for the 
bridge. 

To make matters worse, he found two of 
them! 

With a degree of confidence in himself grown 
considerably smaller, he settled upon the branch 
of the stream which was the right one according 
to his recollection of the map, swung over it a 
couple of times as low as he dared, peering 
down through the blackness at the ground under- 
neath, then swung off straight north with a quick 
glance at his watch. 

His wanderings had taken more time than he 
had dreamed. He was just ten minutes too 
early ! 

Seven or eight minutes later he was again over 
the appointed spot, but this time at a much higher 
altitude. When still some distance away and at 
least seven thousand feet high, he shut off his 
motor and began to come down. Instantly the 


THE WORK GOES ON! 239 

roar of another aeroplane motor reached his 
ears. 

“Hello!” he exclaimed; “somebody else 
about ! That ’s likely to complicate matters if he 
spots me.” 

A moment later the German machine, which 
had of course been quite invisible, winked on 
its ordinary lights. Dick’s first impulse was to 
reply by lighting his own; then he realized that 
this would never do, principally because it had 
been agreed beforehand that his plane was to 
show no lights whatever during the entire pro- 
ceeding, and Lenor’s suspicions would surely be 
aroused by a plane which showed any. 

To his relief the sound of the German’s en- 
gine grew fainter rapidly, and a moment later 
he saw beneath him, faint but distinguishable, 
the signal agreed upon. Instantly he began to 
descend. The landing he made would not have 
drawn him a very good mark from his teachers 
during his student days, because it was too hasty 
to be perfect. On all sides of him flickering 
lights of different kinds proved all too clearly 
the proximity of the enemy’s forces, while at the 
bridge, less than a mile away, a huge searchlight 
suddenly began to sweep the sky with its long 
beam. 

The instant the machine stopped, Dick leaned 


240 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


forward in his seat, pulling out the automatic 
pistol which hung at his hip. 

Two figures came running toward him through 
the darkness. Dick dropped from his seat, 
putting the machine between him and the two 
figures. 

“Halt!” he called, keeping his voice low; 
“you have the word?” 

“Farle!” answered a voice, the Colonel’s 
name having been agreed upon as a password. 

“All right,” answered Dick; “but that’s not 
Lenor’s voice. Where is he? ” 

“ M. Lenor was killed yesterday,” answered 
the voice. 

Dick started, not so much at the startling in- 
formation as at the voice, for it was that of a 
woman ! 

“Then who are you?” he demanded. 

The woman came close to the plane and held 
out her hands in a quick gesture of appeal. 

“ Quick, monsieur,” she begged, putting a 
small roll of papers into Dick’s hand; “ these are 
from Lenor. You are to take these and go. 
Your plane was seen. You have no more than a 
few seconds. M. Lenor is dead, but you are to 
say to those who will understand that the work 
goes on. You hear, monsieur — the work goes 
on!” 






j£l I I'y 'y 




u Quick, Monsieur she begged 







THE WORK GOES ON! 


241 


Her companion, still merely a dim figure 
beyond the plane, said something to her in a low 
tone which Dick did not catch. At the same 
time he saw moving lights in the direction of the 
bridge, and heard the faint far-off hum of the 
German plane, evidently coming back. 

“You must not wait,” the woman cried anx- 
iously. “ Start at once.” 

Dick hesitated. 

“ See here,” he said finally, “ do you mean 
that you ’re in danger? ” 

“That is nothing,” she answered. “We are 
always in danger.” 

“ But I can get you out of this,” he insisted. 
“ Get in with me.” 

As he spoke there was a hoarse shout behind 
them, an answering call from the other side. The 
bobbing lights came nearer. Dick wasted 
another few seconds in argument, then suddenly 
realized that he was talking to empty air. The 
woman and her companion had melted away 
into the night. 

Further delay being not only useless but dan- 
gerous, he climbed quickly into his seat. The 
first roar of his motor seemed fairly to set fire 
to the darkness around him. The noise of the 
engine drowned all other sounds — save the 
sharp, high-pitched ping of a bullet which 


242 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


hummed through the air close to his head. The 
plane started across the field, and as it did so 
little flashes of flame burst out of the night on all 
sides and the bullets hummed thicker. 


CHAPTER XXXI 

The Compass that Didn’t Point North 

A slightly longer delay would probably have 
brought disaster, and as it was Dick climbed 
into the air through a perfect shower of Mauser 
bullets. The only light about his plane at which 
the Germans could aim was the flashing exhaust 
from his motor, which undoubtedly caused most 
of them to shoot too far behind the rising and 
vanishing plane. He wasted no time in dodging, 
but climbed straight up, every sense strained for 
the first sound that would tell him of a serious 
hit, his back fairly tingling and crawling at the 
possibility of being drilled from behind. 

His next concern was for German planes. 
One, he knew, must be somewhere in the air 
near him, as he had heard it coming just before 
the woman spy and her companion vanished. He 
was never able to tell whether or not any serious 
pursuit of him was actually attempted, but if 
it was, none of the hostile planes came within 
sight, nor, when he shut off his motor, could he 
hear anything. 


244 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Once assured that he was not being pursued, 
he glanced at his watch. It showed half-past 
two. He had run just about on schedule. Unless 
something unexpected occurred he should be back 
at Headquarters in an hour’s time, with a chance 
for some much-needed sleep ahead of him. 

For the first time he had an opportunity to 
think of the night’s adventure. The news of 
Lenor’s death was something of a shock, but the 
sinister part of it was the bareness of the report, 
the complete lack of detail. “ M. Lenor is 
dead!” the woman had told him, and that was 
all. Probably nobody would ever know how 
his death had occurred. Already the woman 
herself might have fallen into the hands of the 
Germans. Dick kept thinking of her insistent 
words — “The work goes on!” Again he was 
filled with admiration for the thankless, unswerv- 
ing devotion of these spies. They worked in 
darkness, died unknown and unmarked, yet stuck 
to their task. No matter what happened to one, 
another was ready — the work went on! 

With startling abruptness these thoughts were 
interrupted by a sudden silence. The intense 
stillness of the upper air always came with some- 
thing of a shock, even when he shut the motor 
off himself : now that it came unexpectedly, it was 
almost like a blow upon his eardrums. 


A COMPASS THAT DIDN’T WORK 245 

Dick lost no time in trying every expedient for 
restoring the engine’s activity, but in vain. Ap- 
parently it was dead, and there was no getting 
at the seat of trouble without landing. 

And here he was over hostile country, igno- 
rant of his surroundings, and in total darkness. 
In many respects it was a worse predicament 
than that from which he had just escaped. 

All the way down to earth Dick Allen worked 
like a Trojan with every faculty. He used all 
his flying skill in making the descent as slow as 
possible, at the same time continuing his efforts 
to start the motor, and trying to pierce the 
blackness below him in an effort to find some 
place where he could land in comparative safety. 
At length, when he was no more than a few hun- 
dred feet above the ground, he abandoned his 
efforts to start the engine and devoted all his at- 
tention to the ugly business of landing. 

On one count, at least, he appeared to be for- 
tunate. There was no evidence that the ground 
immediately below him was occupied by any 
part of the hostile forces. As far as that went, 
there was no sign that it was occupied by any- 
body : there was not a light, not a sound, not the 
least evidence of life. And it was so intensely 
black that Dick could make out no details what- 


ever. 


246 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


“ No use talking, I Ve got to take the chance,” 
Dick muttered as he switched on a small electric 
searchlight on the underside of the fuselage. 
“ I might just as well be captured as smashed up 
in a bad fall.” 

The small beam of light showed him at once 
why the ground beneath him had appeared so 
completely deserted. He was over what ap- 
peared to be a huge forest! And now he was so 
low that he could no longer hope for much time. 
The one thing possible was to set the plane on 
a slant and brace himself for the shock. 

Falling into woods was at best a bad business, 
the chance of injury to himself being very great, 
and the complete wreck of the plane a dead cer- 
tainty. Dick unstrapped his life-belt with the 
intention of jumping the instant the plane 
touched the tops of the trees, then set his teeth 
and waited. Happily for him he did not turn off 
the searchlight. Had he done so he would 
probably have failed to see the rift in the hith- 
erto unbroken mass of the forest. 

There was no telling how wide the clearing 
might prove to be, but anything in the shape of 
open ground was a godsend, and Dick risked a 
rather abrupt drop in preference to the sure 
smash that would follow a plunge into the tim- 
ber. And at the last minute he remembered to 


A COMPASS THAT DIDN’T WORK 247 

refasten his life-belt — which undoubtedly saved 
him from injury. 

The landing was abrupt and gave the pilot a 
thorough jolting and shaking-up, but the two- 
seater was a stoutly built affair and appeared to 
weather the shock without injury. 

Dick wasted very few seconds in examining 
the spot into which he had fallen. It seemed 
to be merely a chance clearing in the forest, 
perhaps two hundred yards wide and twice as 
long. As far as Dick could see there were no 
buildings and the ground had not recently been 
cultivated. 

He began his investigations of the engine 
trouble, perfectly certain that he could find the 
trouble, and, providing some part was not 
broken, repair it. He succeeded, but not with 
the speed he could have wished. When finally 
he had located a stoppage in the feed-pipe and 
cleared it away, he looked up to find that it was 
no longer night. The sky was gray and the 
surrounding forest was a dull green. 

Just as he climbed into his seat, he saw from 
the tail of his eye a quick movement on the edge 
of the forest. Turning his head he discovered 
that three people, a man and two children, were 
watching him. As soon as they found them- 
selves observed, they popped out of sight, only 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


248 

to reappear at another point. Their actions 
were furtive as those of wild animals, and they 
were dressed in rags. 

“ A few months ago they were probably happy 
and fairly prosperous peasants, and now look at 
them! ” Dick muttered. “ By George, those are 
the people this war really hits ! ” 

He experienced some slight trouble in rising 
from the clearing, and shaved the tops of the 
trees by an uncomfortably slender margin as he 
rose into the air. Once clear of them he bored 
straight up. He had planned on getting back 
under cover of darkness : daylight complicated 
things. The early hours of the morning were 
those in which the air was most likely to be full 
of scouting Fokkers. Dick was still deep in hos- 
tile territory, and more anxious than ever to get 
back unseen. 

To his relief he found the plane climbing into 
a decidedly cloudy sky. This suited his books 
exactly. By traveling above the clouds he would 
greatly increase his chances of escaping detec- 
tion. 

A few minutes later he was boring through 
the curtain of damp vapor, and the earth was 
shut off from sight as though by a thick blanket. 
He had taken observations before losing sight of 
the earth, and had a rather vague idea of his 


A COMPASS THAT DIDN’T WORK 249 

whereabouts. Once above the clouds, however, 
he had to steer entirely by the compass. 

To his amazement he discovered a few 
moments later that he had either got clear off 
his course or that the compass was pointing 
wrong ! 

He at once set things right, but a moment 
later the same phenomenon manifested itself, 
and he experienced an increasing difficulty in 
flying. The air seemed full of “pockets,” and 
the machine, an unusually steady craft, tricky 
as the tiniest and most unstable of battle-planes. 
Worst of all was the queer action of the com- 
pass. Try as he would, he could not keep to 
his course. Moreover, he knew that he was fly- 
ing badly, the machine hovering always on the 
ragged edge of getting out of control. He had 
several bad side-slips. All these things, added 
to the inevitable physical discomforts which ac- 
company flights at very great heights, tended to 
increase his nervousness. 

“I’ve had about enough of this!” he ex- 
claimed finally. “ I ’m going to slide down a 
ways and see if that ’ll help.” 

A few seconds later he experienced a shock 
like nothing he had known since the day of his 
first trip aloft in an aeroplane. He suddenly 
shot down out of the clouds, but he emerged 


250 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


wrong side up! He was actually flying with his 
head pointing toward earth ! 

He righted himself without difficulty, but with 
the first twinge of actual fear he had known in 
months. He remembered hearing other flyers 
say that once one got above the clouds it was 
infinitely worse than flying in the darkness, and 
that nothing seemed to be normal, but it was 
his first experience. 

“I think,” he declared with an involuntary 
shudder, “ that I ’ll stick a trifle closer to Mother 
Earth ! I ’d rather take a chance with Brother 
Boche than go through that sort of thing! ” 

Finding, to his relief, that the compass had 
ceased its uncertain and bewildering wobblings, 
he again straightened his course. He kept to 
great heights, now and then driving up through 
the clouds, but only for short intervals. Again 
and again he sighted planes at various heights 
and distances, and upon seeing them he usually 
bolted into the shreds and streamers of vapor, 
flying through them for a few moments, then 
planing down again and using his eyes until 
another disappearance seemed advisable. 

These tactics were anything but agreeable. 
He was flying at such an altitude that he was in 
constant physical discomfort. He had some 
difficulty in breathing, his head ached cruelly, 


A COMPASS THAT DIDN’T WORK 251 

and his heart action was disconcertingly irregu- 
lar, while his suffering from cold was extreme, 
and his fingers were so numb that he had trouble 
operating the controls. But he simply dared 
not go down until more sure of safety. In his 
present physical condition he knew that he was 
incapable of putting up a fight, and that flight 
must be his course. 

Through sheer luck he had evidently struck a 
section of the front where the German planes 
were comparatively few that morning, and 
finally, with a great feeling of thankfulness, he 
saw far beneath him the network of the two 
lines of trenches. 

Half an hour later the two-seater planed 
down to the landing-field, and a thoroughly 
frozen pilot, more dead than alive, climbed 
numbly down from the seat and staggered 
toward the hangars. 


CHAPTER XXXII 

The Eyes of the Big Guns 

“That's the spot! ” Dick called through the 
speaking-tube; “that patch of woods the other 
side of the ploughed field! ” 

Dan Ericsson at once swung the nose of the 
plane in that direction, and the flyers swept over 
the green mass of the woods, both of them peering 
down in an effort to see through the enveloping 
screen of leaves and branches. For all their 
efforts they could see nothing. The wood might 
have contained several thousand men, might 
have been empty — or it might have concealed 
the German battery for which they were hunt- 
ing. 

“Sure you’re right?” Dan asked, a little un- 
easily. “We don’t want to be responsible for 
wasting several thousand dollars’ worth of 
shells on a harmless bunch of trees ! ” 

“ I ’m right, fast enough,” Dick answered con- 
fidently. “ Swing over them again, a little lower 
down.” 

Once more the plane, like a circling hawk, 
swooped over the woods, and this time Dick’s 


EYES OF THE BIG GUNS 253 

sharp eyes were rewarded. He first made out 
a heap of branches that didn’t look just right; 
then his eye picked out the screened barrel of a 
heavy gun, a glint of metal, and the gray-green 
figures of several German artillerymen. 

“All right! ” he cried; “ I ’ve got ’em! Swing 
off again; the show isn’t to begin for five min- 
utes.” 

Again Dan swung off in a circle, never getting 
very far from the patch of woods. The two 
flyers were on duty this morning as the eyes of 
the big guns. The day before, a scouting plane 
had marked down the position of a concealed 
German battery which had for a day or so 
been flinging shells into the Allied lines with 
considerable effect. French batteries had been 
concentrated for the destruction of these pieces, 
and the attempt was to begin at nine o’clock. 

As the French gunners were several miles 
away from their target, they were wholly unable 
to watch the results of their fire, and the duty 
of “spotting” fell upon the airmen. Below the 
plane streamed out slim trailers of wire, the 
aerials of a wireless apparatus. It was Dick’s 
duty to watch the bursting shells from the 
French batteries, and send back to the distant 
gunners word of just how far off the mark 
their shots were falling. 


254 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Up to that moment the Germans evidently did 
not realize that the position of their craftily con- 
cealed guns had been discovered, and that the 
plane was there for the purpose of “ spotting,' ” 
for they made no effort to drive it off, as they 
certainly would do the instant they understood 
the real significance of its presence. 

For three of the five minutes left, Dan bored 
away from the wood as though he had not the 
slightest interest in its possible contents, then 
swung round sharply and came flying back. The 
maneuver was perfectly timed. He had brought 
Dick back into an excellent position for observa- 
tion just as a French shell dropped into the 
ploughed field, perhaps three hundred yards to 
one side of the wood and an equal distance short 
of it. 

Instantly Dick was at work, and a cryptic mes- 
sage went through the air to the man in charge 
of the wireless station behind the bellowing 
guns. 

“Number i,” read the message, “9.30. 
300 M.” 

This meant that the shell, which had been fired 
from gun No. 1 of the French battery, had 
missed the target by about three hundred meters. 
The “9.30” told the gunners in which direction 
the error had been. The target was assumed to 


EYES OF THE BIG GUNS 255 

be the center of the face of a clock. Thus Dick’s 
figures meant that the position of the first shell 
corresponded to the position of the hour-hand 
of a clock marking half-past nine. By combining 
this with the extent of the error, the officer in 
command of the battery could at once correct 
his elevation and lateral direction. 

A few seconds after the first shell had struck, 
the second burst. This one soared clear over 
the wood, coming to earth in a thicket far be- 
yond it and clear to the right. Dick’s message 
read, “No. 2, 500 M. long, 300 M. 3.00.” 

And then, before the third shell dropped, a 
concealed battery of German high-angle guns 
took a hand in the game and began reaching for 
the plane with shrapnel. 

“Rotten shooting!” Dan shouted scornfully 
through the tube. “ I can hang on for a bit this 
low until they make things hotter.” 

Dick nodded, far too busy to answer. He 
knew that with the air around the plane torn by 
shrapnel the accurate sending of messages would 
be increasingly difficult, and that before many 
moments the situation would be further compli- 
cated by the arrival of German combat-planes. 
And he was trying frantically to get the distant 
guns “on” the target before he and Dan were 
driven off. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


256 

There followed some feverish minutes. Guns 
One, Two, and Four were busily engaged in 
plumping their shells down into empty ground, 
while Number Three’s first shot had been almost 
a center. Evidently something had gone wrong, 
however, for the other three guns did not seem 
to be correcting their fire. 

Desperate at this apparent check, Dick began 
sending one message over and over: “Number 
Three on! Number Three on! Number 
Three on ! ” hoping to get this one word through 
and abandoning his attempts to correct the fire 
of the other guns. If the battery commander 
should learn that one of his guns was on the 
target and its shells reaching their mark, he 
could correct the fire of his other pieces by that 
means. 

“That’s close enough,” Dan called back, as 
a shrapnel from the banging anti-aircraft guns 
exploded uncomfortably close to them; “we’ll 
go up ! ” 

From the higher level it was even more diffi- 
cult to do accurate spotting, because of the smoke 
and dust stirred up by the bursting French pro- 
jectiles and that of the German high-angles. 
But Dick saw only too plainly that not only had 
the three erring guns failed to get “on,” but 
Number Three was still hammering at the mere 


EYES OF THE BIG GUNS 257 

edge of the wood, and its shells were doing no 
actual damage. 

“Work fast!” warned Dan. “Couple of 
Fokkers coming!” 

Convinced now that something had gone 
wrong with the wireless and that he could not 
hope to get a message through that way, Dick 
hastily scrawled the corrections for all four guns 
on a square of thin, tough paper, rolled it into a 
small compass, and pushed it into a cylinder tied 
to the leg of a carrier-pigeon which he took from 
a wicker cage fastened to the side of his seat, 
then flung the bird as far out into the air as he 
could. 

The pigeon obeyed its homing instinct with 
the marvelous certainty that makes its kind so 
valuable for the carrying of messages, but un- 
happily the instinct triumphed over everything 
else, and instead of flying straight away from 
the plane, the bird sheered over toward it. In- 
stantly the tremendous suction of the spinning 
propeller caught him, he was sucked into the 
whirling blades and knocked to atoms in an in- 
stant. 

The last chance of long-distance communica- 
tion with the distant battery was destroyed! 
The only way now to get word to them was to 
take it there ! He did n’t take the time to shout 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


258 

a signal to Dan, but jerked on the cord tied to 
his wrist, and Dan responded as though Dick 
had seized the controls himself. 

Then, just as they were starting off, Dick felt 
through the receiving-apparatus strapped to his 
helmet the signals from the battery station, an 
insistent repetition of his call, then the crisp 
question, — 

“Where are you? Why don’t you signal?” 

Once more Dick ordered Dan to change the 
direction of his flight; again he began sending 
out the all-important figures to the distant guns. 

The sudden sharp explosion of their own 
machine-gun almost in his ear startled him; he 
glanced up just long enough to see that Dan 
Was firing at the nearest of three or four con- 
verging German planes, then went back to his 
work. 

His business was to get the correct range 
through to the sweating gunners, no matter what 
happened to the plane which carried him, and 
he felt that Dan’s wonderful marksmanship 
could be trusted to give him a few minutes, even 
though the enemy planes were faster and out- 
numbered them four to one. 

So, while Dan simultaneously kept up a run- 
ning fight with the darting Fokkers and kept his 
observer as close as possible to the bombarded 


EYES OF THE BIG GUNS 259 

strip of woodland, Dick concentrated his efforts 
on trying to get through his messages. 

How long the unequal combat continued 
neither man knew. Nothing but Dan’s superb 
gunnery enabled the plane to maintain its posi- 
tion as long as it did. He managed to send one 
German down out of control, and to surround 
himself with such a sheet of flying metal as to 
make the other three maneuver cautiously, until 
at last Dick’s anxious eyes saw three shells in 
succession burst in the heart of the wood, and 
he knew that he had finally succeeded and that 
the full strength of the battery was “ on ” ! 

Then he jerked frantically on the cord and 
gave Dan the signal to go down. Instead of 
responding, Dan merely jerked feebly on the 
cord in turn. 

For an instant Dick did not take in what had 
happened, then he noticed Dan’s queer position. 
The Minnesotan had been hit! 

Dick took the controls and hit the slope of 
descent best calculated for safety. Fighting was 
out of the question. He could not reach the 
Lewis, which was operated from Dan’s seat, and 
his only weapon was the automatic pistol in its 
holster and an ordinary service rifle held in 
clamps beside his seat. And in the same instant 
that his hands closed on the controls, he real- 


26 o 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


ized that he could not possibly escape: the Fok- 
kers were too close, his own height too great, and 
his speed too little in comparison with theirs. 

It was the first time that he had absolutely 
given himself up for lost. Even in his single- 
handed fight back of the German lines he had 
felt somehow that he was going to come through 
all right, but now every possibility of escape 
seemed closed. 

Yet in the very moment that he gave up, help 
as unexpected as it was effective arrived. Dick’s 
first consciousness that something had happened 
came when he glanced over his shoulder to see 
how close his pursuers were. They were close 
enough — too close for comfort! And yet, with 
their victim almost within their grasp, they sud- 
denly flung up their noses and climbed, instead 
of continuing their downward swoops. At the 
same instant Dick’s plane careened and side- 
slipped as though it had dropped into a bad air- 
pocket, two roaring streaks darted by him, one 
on the left, the other on the right, both so close 
that the wind of their passage had rocked his 
machine as a rowboat is rocked by the waves 
from a steamer, and two angry little Nieuports 
darted at the Huns, their machine-guns spitting 
as they went! 

Dick did not wait to see the outcome of the 


EYES OF THE BIG GUNS 261 


fight. The intervention of the French combat- 
planes had given him his chance to get clear, 
and he planed down swiftly toward the nearest 
point of safety back of the Allied lines, his one 
concern the seriousness of Dan’s wound. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 
The Green Wave 

The German’s machine-gun bullet had per- 
formed very considerately. It had passed 
through the fleshy part of Dan’s shoulder, tear- 
ing the muscles without striking the bone, and 
inflicting a painful but by no means serious 
wound. 

It was an unfortunate shot, inasmuch as it 
deprived Colonel Farle of one of his best flyers 
at a moment when he needed the full strength of 
his squadron. 

The morning that Lieutenants Allen and 
Ericsson spent spotting for the French guns was 
the last bit of what might be called detached 
work the squadron was to know for many a day. 

For several days thereafter, scout-planes 
brought in persistent reports of great and in- 
creasing activity behind the German lines. It 
was known, of course, that since the collapse of 
Russian resistance, immense forces of men and 
guns had been moved by the foe from the eastern 
to the western front, and the weight of these 


THE GREEN WAVE 263 

fresh divisions had already been felt by the 
British forces farther to the north. Now it was 
evident that the foe intended a huge effort far- 
ther to the south, against that part of the line 
held by French and American forces. 

With the first intimation of the gathering 
storm, the activity of the air forces of both sides 
increased. All squadrons along the front were 
kept at full strength, mechanics labored night 
and day maintaining the planes in instant read- 
iness for service, and the flyers were continually 
in the air. 

The object of the Allied planes was to dom- 
inate the air to such an extent that they could fly 
at will above the German lines, keep close track 
of the concentrations at different points of men 
and guns, and so keep the high commands in 
possession of accurate knowledge which would 
enable them to be ready for the parrying of the 
blow when it should fall. 

The German airmen, on the other hand, 
fought a more purely defensive action. They 
sought to hide through their own activities the 
movements of their comrades of the land forces. 

During these feverish days — which had about 
them the same heavy, oppressive air which pre- 
cedes a violent thunderstorm — Dick Allen saw 
service so severe and constant as to make his 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


264 

previous experience seem like a mere prelim- 
inary to the real thing. Like the rest of the men 
in the squadron, he simply had no time to feel 
tired: there was never any let-up of sufficient 
length to .let a man realize how much force he 
had expended and how badly in need of rest he 
stood. 

When the period of strain finally ended, the 
beginning of the bombardment which initiated 
the great German thrust that was to end in what 
may be called the Second Battle of the Marne 
came as a positive relief. 

Before the actual beginning of the German 
attacks, Dick Allen had brought himself to be- 
lieve that he was going to be an eye-witness of 
the most stupendous German failure that the 
war had yet produced. He said as much to Dan 
on one of his hurried visits to the latter’s cot in 
a hospital no great distance back of the lines. 

“ I tell you, Dan, this is the beginning of the 
end,” he insisted confidently. “I know that all the 
spring the Boches have been gaining ground, that 
we ’ve been falling back everywhere, even that 
we’ve been losing a frightful number of guns 
and prisoners. But that doesn’t shake my con- 
fidence. 

“I figure it this way: Our main job is the 
whittling down of the German forces. This 


THE GREEN WAVE 265 

whittling process goes on more rapidly when 
the German is taking the defensive than it does 
when we ’re attacking. So I believe that we ’re 
letting the enemy keep the initiative, trading him 
ground for his losses, letting him bleed himself 
until the time comes for the great counter-stroke, 
when he ’ll be too weak to stop it.” 

Dan Ericsson was too restless and irritable 
over his enforced inactivity to be optimistic about 
anything. 

“ I hope you ’re right,” he answered grimly, 
and that was his sole comment. 

But when the tremendous artillery action gave 
place to the first infantry thrusts, Dick’s con- 
fidence began to crumble. 

One morning during the first week in June, 
only a few days after the Germans had come 
storming across the river Aisne in the great rush 
toward the Marne, he witnessed an operation, 
small in itself, yet typical of what was going 
on along the whole length of the front against 
which the gray-green masses of the foe were 
flinging themselves. 

He was up alone in a little Spad plane, having 
been set to watch a certain restricted section of 
the front, his own plane being merely a link in 
a long chain of watchful, circling aerial outposts. 
It happened that on this particular morning the 


266 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


German air forces were inactive, and he had 
plenty of time to watch what went on beneath 
him. 

For some little time he did not realize that 
anything was happening directly beneath him. 
East and west the air was thick with smoke and 
shaken by the shattering explosions of heavy 
guns, but immediately below him it seemed quiet. 
Then his sharp eyes began to pick out details, 
and he saw that the quiet was only temporary. 

The shadow of his plane passed over the bat- 
tered ruins of a village which defended a bridge- 
head over a small stream. The village was full 
of French infantry and machine-guns. Back of 
the village, taking advantage of every favorable 
fold in the ground, were three or four batteries 
of the famous French “ 75’s,” holding their fire, 
waiting for the enemy to betray himself before 
disclosing their own position. Once he had 
located the French, Dick began hunting for the 
foe. Only too soon he found them! On the 
far side of the stream, hidden from the French 
by obstacles which could not shelter it from his 
observation, the ground was fairly crawling with 
the helmeted figures. Two or three patches of 
woods and a long, sharp-sided ravine were 
packed with them, and he saw for the first time 
the new “infantry cannon,” very light guns 


THE GREEN WAVE 267 

which actually accompanied the foot, being 
hauled by men instead of horses. 

Dick did what he could to signal to the men 
beneath him the presence and location of the 
foe, dropping several hastily scrawled messages 
fastened to wooden darts with leaden heads; 
but even had his information reached them, it 
would have come too late. As he watched, the 
attack commenced. 

Overmatched from the very outset by at least 
three times their number of guns, the French 
“75V’ stuck to their position until to hold it 
longer was merely to make a useless sacrifice, 
then tried to withdraw, but succeeded in getting 
clear with no more than half their pieces. 

Then while the German guns poured shells 
into the village, the distant woods and gullies 
sprouted with moving, gray-green dots, which 
swarmed down upon the bridge, or pushed into 
the water where there was evidently a ford in the 
narrow stream. 

Once, twice, three times the French beat back 
the advancing foe, in spite of the pounding shells. 
Dick could see the German masses wither under 
the sweeping, spraying fire of machine-guns, see 
the heaps of dead which marked every futile 
effort — and yet one attack followed another, and 
there seemed to be no decrease in the number 


268 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


of attacking Germans in spite of their visible and 
heavy losses. 

It took perhaps half an hour for the inevitable 
to happen. At the end of that time the slender 
force of defenders had practically ceased to 
exist. A few scattered dots in pale blue, firing 
as they fell back, melted into the hills behind 
the village, where the foe was now swarming 
about the captured machine-guns, and the 
wounded which the beaten French had been 
unable to carry away with them. 

Even before the end of Dick’s time on patrol, 
the appearance of the captured position had en- 
tirely changed. German engineers had come 
hurrying up from somewhere, the ruins of the 
village had been turned into a veritable little 
fortress studded with nests of machine-guns, the 
battered bridge had been repaired, and the en- 
gineers were already busy spanning the stream 
with another bridge. Evidendy the point was 
to be employed for the swift passage of large 
bodies of the enemy. 

Dick flew back, oppressed with a sense of 
helplessness. There were so many of the Ger- 
mans ! They seemed to spring out of the earth 
like the armed warriors who came up after the 
sowing of the dragon’s teeth in the ancient myth. 
Against double, even triple their number, the 


THE GREEN WAVE 269 

French could have held the village and the 
bridge. With reinforcements they might have 
held it as it was. But they had had to face 
five or six times their number, and there had 
been no reinforcements! 

And Dick knew that much the same thing was 
happening on a front which stretched from 
Rheims to Soissons ! 

When he returned to Headquarters he found 
everything in an orderly but feverish confusion. 
The battered chateau and the sprawling village 
which had sheltered the men of the squadron 
for so many weeks and months lay straight in 
the path of the foe’s advance, and there seemed 
at the moment no possibility that that advance 
would be brought to a stop before it had pene- 
trated even deeper into the heart of France. 
Colonel Farle was moving his forces before the 
pressure became too great, and while there was 
time for the removal of all sorts of materiel, 
which otherwise might have to be destroyed or 
allowed to fall into the hands of the advancing 
foe. 

But Dick was destined to be affected even 
more deeply than most of his comrades by the 
withdrawal. He answered a summons to Head- 
quarters, where he found Colonel Farle doing 
the impossible by accomplishing several things 


270 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


at once, and was informed that he had been 
ordered transferred to another squadron. 

Dick was bitterly disappointed at the news, 
and Colonel Farle, busy as he was, took time 
to speak a few very comforting words. 

“You are being transferred to one of the 
newly formed American flying units,” he said, 
“ and that unquestionably means an advance in 
rank. I am sorry to have you go. You and your 
comrades of the squadron have made me proud 
of my command and my men.” 

So that night, instead of assisting in the task 
of getting the squadron transferred to new 
quarters farther to the rear, Dick Allen was 
traveling toward his new post on a French mili- 
tary railroad, while behind him he knew that the 
Green Wave was still hurling itself against the 
Allied lines. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

Paris Waits 

Dick began this night journey in a thoroughly 
wretched state of mind. Above all else he was 
oppressed by the consciousness — which never 
left him — of that steady pressure of the Ger- 
man hordes. This feeling had been increased 
by the hasty withdrawal of Colonel Farle’s 
forces from the position where they had been 
for so long, and by his own sudden transfer to 
another point. 

The one rift in the gloom was the prospect 
of immediate service. He felt that the tremen- 
dous activities of the past weeks would be in- 
finitely preferable to such enforced idleness as 
Dan’s. He felt that this was the moment of 
supreme effort for every man in the Allied forces, 
that every one of them was being called upon for 
the greatest exertions of which he was capable. 
That there was any region in which seeming in- 
activity was the prevailing order of things never 
entered his head. 

When, at a very early hour on a June morning, 


272 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

he presented himself at the headquarters of the 
American division to which he was to be at- 
tached, situated in one of those little French 
villages now nameless in the dispatches, but des- 
tined one day to be famous, he found the cus- 
tomary scene of activity, and had to wait for 
some time before anybody would see him. 

Then a staff -major, who looked as though 
he felt that he had a great many more impor- 
tant things to do, came out and spoke to him 
with most unsatisfactory briefness. 

“Lieutenant Allen?” he asked, in that un- 
pleasant tone employed by some men which 
always conveys the impression that they don’t 
believe what has been told them. “ Oh, yes, I 
believe you — yes, you are to report at once 
to Major Ferguson in Paris.” 

Dick could not repress an exclamation of as- 
tonishment. 

“ Paris ! ” he repeated. 

The Major blinked at him. 

“Paris!” he repeated, as though not used to 
having to say a thing twice. 

Dick recovered himself and saluted. 

“Very well, sir,” he said, and went out of the 
office. 

And all the way to Paris, Dick saw things 
which made him believe that nobody except him- 


PARIS WAITS 


273 

self and a few others really appreciated the 
deadly seriousness of the situation at the front, 
where those thin, bending lines were giving way 
under the awful weight of the Green Wave. 

He had believed that every available regiment 
of reserve troops was being flung eastward to 
become part of that human barrier, and yet he 
could not actually see any evidences that unusual 
numbers of men, guns, or stores were being sent 
to the front. It was incredible, but it was true ! 

During most of his journey his sole com- 
panion, a grizzled French major of infantry, 
slept noisily and thoroughly. Dick resented the 
other’s snoring, being unable to sleep for his 
own part, and was unaffectedly glad on several 
counts when the Major woke up, looked about 
him, and said, “Bon jour, monsieur! ” with the 
characteristic politeness of his people — which is 
even in evidence early in the morning. 

To him the American made guarded confes- 
sion of the doubts and fears which harassed him. 
The Major was sober, but by no means inclined 
to agree with Dick’s gloomy forebodings. 

“ Of course we are being driven back,” he 
agreed instantly. “ It is inevitable that we should 
be driven back. It is possible that we may be 
^ driven back much farther than we like to with- 
draw. What would you? Suppose a man is 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


274 

standing in a gateway, guarding the passage, 
and another man, bigger than the one in the 
gate, flings himself upon him. The first man will 
have to give ground before he can bring the 
other to a stop. 

“ It is a law of nature just as much as it is a law 
of war. If a moving body strikes a stationary 
body of about the same size and weight, the 
latter will have to go back until the energy of the 
former has spent itself. That is all ! ” 

Upon which the Major, apparently dismissing 
the subject as one of minor importance, lighted 
a very large cigar, looked placidly out of the 
window, and began talking about the fertile 
appearance of the country through which they 
were passing. 

Dick could not help being in a measure put at 
ease by the older man’s total lack of nervous- 
ness, but it remained for the appearance and 
attitude of Paris itself completely to restore his 
peace of mind. 

Paris, he discovered within an hour of his 
arrival, was by no means ignorant of the possi- 
bilities which the immediate future held in store. 
The city knew that the invader was closer to 
its gates than he had been since the first months 
of the war. And yet there was no panic, no 
apparent fear. For the most part the Parisians 


PARIS WAITS 


275 


were calm and unafraid. Two things seemed 
to give them confidence: the constantly increas- 
ing numbers of brown-clad American soldiers, 
and Foch! 

Dick had little time for studying the attitude 
of the Parisian mind. He lost no time in report- 
ing to Major Ferguson, and a host of duties at 
once occupied all his time. The complete change 
in the nature of his work seemed queer. One 
day he was involved in the rush and haste of 
Farle’s withdrawal within sound of the German 
guns: forty-eight hours later he was part of a 
new organization which had not yet smelled 
powder, doing his part in the work of organiza- 
tion and preparation, as though this was the very 
beginning of operations instead of a vast crisis 
which had come after four long years of 
fighting ! 

Familiar faces were to be encountered on all 
sides. Almost the first man Dick saw was Bob 
Holmquist — a captain now — and there were 
two or three of the men he had known in the 
training-camp in America. 

Before the departure from Paris they had 
another accession of strength. Dan Ericsson 
arrived from the hospital, looking a little thin 
and pale, but declaring himself fit for immediate 
service. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


276 

“Another day,” he said, “and I’d have 
knocked down that surgeon and climbed out of 
a window ! They kept me there a week after I 
was ready to fly! ” 

Upon Dan’s arrival, Holmquist declared that 
the moment for an official reunion had come, 
and led Dick and Dan to the same cafe where 
they had found him upon their first arrival in 
Paris, and they found a table in the corner of the 
room. The appearance of the crowd was very 
much the same: the one noticeable change was 
the great increase in the number of American 
uniforms. 

“Well, here we are!” exclaimed Holmquist. 
“ This is n’t just the way the Three Musketeers 
had planned to get together, but it will do very 
well. We haven’t managed to sweep the air 
clear of Germans, nor put an end to the war as 
we really hoped to do, but we ’ve had some hard 
knocks and given hard ones in exchange, and 
we’re together in plenty of time for the big 
show! ” 

He grinned as his companions looked at him 
rather blankly. 

“Oh, I mean it! You two can pull faces just 
as long as you please ; I know what I ’m talking 
about. You may think this is a mighty black 
hour. Perhaps it is, but it’s the dark hour 


PARIS WAITS 


277 

Before the dawn. And to-morrow we go up to 
the front! ” 

“And probably waste two weeks whipping 
these youngsters into shape! ” grumbled Dan. 

This time there was about Bob Holmquist’s 
grin a look of superior intelligence. 

“Waste nothing, you old grouch!” he an- 
swered. “Of course, a mere lieutenant isn’t 
supposed to know things. You can’t be expected 
to — ” 

“ I suppose a mighty captain knows just 
what’s going to happen? ” suggested Dick. 

“ This particular mighty captain has been told 
just enough so that he can cure your ill-temper,” 
answered Bob. “ Of course I can’t betray staff 
secrets to mere striplings like you, who are n’t 
to be trusted with valuable information, but I can 
say this much: I happen to know the name of 
the place that’s to be our headquarters, I know 
that the hangars are ready, that the planes are 
being set up this minute, and that before we ’re 
a week older we’ll be in the thick of bigger 
things than any of us have seen yeti ” 


CHAPTER XXXV 

The Black Hawks 

In the first faint gray light of an August morn- 
ing, the camp of the squadron that was destined 
to be known as the “ Black Hawks ” presented a 
lively appearance. 

Lights twinkled in all the buildings, motor- 
cycles sped this way and that, hurrying figures 
darted in all directions. Out on the flying-field 
sixteen planes, ghostly and vague in the uncer- 
tain light, stood in a long, even row in front of 
the gaping hangars. About the planes dozens 
of men were busy, and there was an incessant 
rattle of tools and mutter of speech. 

At the far end of the line half a dozen voices 
suddenly began to sing. The lines were jerky, 
the tune old, but the song carried with it a cer- 
tain spirit and “go ” : 

“ What would the infantry do without us? 

What makes the gunners so keen about us? 

Who keeps the Boche in his dugout tight. 
Worried and nervous day and night? 

We are the eyes of the belching guns! 

We are the birds that feed on Huns! 

Swift as the arrows that sped of yore, 

The Black Hawks of the Flying Corps !” 


THE BLACK HAWKS 


279 


Somewhere out beyond the line of hills behind 
which the camp of the Black Hawks lay, heavy 
guns were already in action, hammering steadily, 
and farther away there was a lively bickering of 
rifle-fire. A bugle blew sharply, and from the 
mess-hall groups and knots of men hurried out 
and moved toward the flying-field. 

Now from the long line of waiting planes 
there rose the sudden sharp explosions of a pow- 
erful motor, which gradually settled into a steady 
droning roar. One after another the shining 
motors came to life, drowning out the eager 
voices which called to each other. A cloud of 
bluish smoke rose above the field. 

The first red shaft of sunlight shot over the 
line of the distant horizon, and as it did so a 
plane lifted itself across the short grass and into 
the air. After an interval another followed it, 
then another and another. For a time no other 
sound was audible than the roar of sixteen 
motors. Finally all sixteen of them were in the 
air; the sounds of the first ones were already 
growing fainter. By the time the morning light 
had begun to spread over the field, nothing was 
left except knots of mechanics staring eastward 
after the vanishing planes. 

From his position midway of the squadron, 
Dick Allen could look backward or forward over 


28 o 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


the planes, stretched out in regular formation 
like a flock of gigantic geese. For a time they 
headed east, then, following the signal of the 
leading plane, swung to the left, paralleling the 
line of the Allied positions. 

Presently there came droning up from the 
earth below them a second swarm of planes, a 
French squadron joining forces with the Amer- 
icans. There was a brief exchange of smoke- 
signals; then the two squadrons, keeping some 
distance apart, all headed to the east, the French 
slightly higher and somewhat in advance of the 
Americans. 

Below them, had they looked down, the avia- 
tors might have seen the earth swarming with 
troops, the roads lined with moving columns. 
Seen from above, each regiment would have 
showed a sea of little pink faces as the infan- 
trymen looked up and cheered themselves hoarse 
at the spectacle overhead. But the bird-men did 
not look down. To-morrow, perhaps, they 
might have dealings with the crawling creatures 
of the earth, but to-day they had eyes only for 
the air ahead of them. 

None of the flyers knew exactly what had 
happened during the last few days, save in the 
most general way. In their isolated camp, close 
to the front, yet hedged off from it, little infor- 


THE BLACK HAWKS 


281 

mation reached them. Their knowledge was 
limited to what they had actually seen. They 
had watched the gradual stiffening of the French 
and American lines, the decreasing velocity of 
the Green Wave, the gradual gathering behind 
the Allied lines of the vast numbers of reserves 
which were to be flung forward in the counter- 
thrust. They knew that the thing they had hoped 
and prayed for seemed to be coming, but they 
did not know that it had really come, that for 
the second time Foch was going to strike when 
the foe least expected the blow, and that this 
time the thrust was to go deeper and wound more 
gravely. 

But on this morning their concern was not 
with the moving masses beneath them. They 
had gone out in force to seek the foe and fight 
him wherever found! 

An hour of swift cruising passed before the 
foe showed himself at all. Dick had begun to 
think that the German air forces had completely 
withdrawn themselves and refused the issue of 
a general action, when he saw the first of them, 
far below and off to the left, darting this way 
and that as though uncertain in which direction 
to attempt an escape. 

Instantly two of the French planes detached 
themselves from the squadron and darted in 


282 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


pursuit. Lower and lower swooped the fleeing 
German, evidently seeking the protection of his 
land-batteries, drawing the pursuing Frenchmen 
after him. Closer and closer they came. Now 
the guns below were reaching for them: white 
smoke-puffs began dotting the air about them, 
but unmindful of this the two Nieuports sped 
on, intent only on closing with the foe. 

Suddenly the air swarmed with German planes 
where a moment before there had been only one t 
The ruse had succeeded: the single Fokker had 
drawn the two Frenchmen away from the sup- 
port of their comrades and into a very swarm of 
Boche machines which had suddenly shot up into 
the air to meet them. 

There was no need for signals. Every airman 
in the two squadrons saw the plight of the dar- 
ing Nieuports, saw the chance that lay before 
him, and shot forward. 

Intervals were maintained for the sake of 
safety, but formations were to a great extent 
lost. From the leading planes of the two squad- 
rons cautioning signals were flashed back to 
those behind. In aerial combats where several 
machines are engaged on each side, each airman 
must keep his distance, or his machine will be a 
greater source of danger to his own forces than 
to the foe. 


THE BLACK HAWKS 283 

A plane is a pretty big machine; it travels at 
tremendous speed, and it requires considerable 
space in which to maneuver. A squadron mov- 
ing too compactly may come to grief without 
even encountering the foe — and it was with 
the intention of preventing such mishaps that 
the leading planes were now signaling those 
behind them to preserve their intervals. 

As he closed in with the rest, Dick caught 
flashing glimpses of the first preliminary combat 
between the two detached French planes and the 
swarm of Germans about them. He saw one 
German go fluttering down, and almost at the 
same instant a Nieuport vanished in a bright 
flash of flame followed by a huge ball of black 
smoke, a German shot having struck and ex- 
ploded its gas-tank. 

While the main Franco-American forces were 
still some distance away, the second Frenchman 
(Dick did not learn until long afterward that 
it was none other than Godard himself) was 
dashed to destruction, but ended his career in a 
glorious victory for all that. 

For several minutes, by a masterly exhibition 
of flying skill, he had eluded the enemy machines 
which surrounded him, making no effort to return 
their fire, but simply maneuvering until he got 
exactly the position he wanted. When finally 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


284 

he gained it, he turned his plane into a huge pro- 
jectile and launched it at the foe, hurtling down 
through the very center of the swarming Ger- 
mans, carrying no fewer than three of them with 
him as he crashed to earth ! 

Thus at the outset four German planes were 
put down with a loss of two French machines, 
and the main forces closed in inspired by God- 
ard’s last feat of daring. 

For no more than a few seconds did either side 
maintain any sort of formation. One moment 
the hostile squadrons were rushing headlong 
upon each other, every man who could train his 
weapon without endangering a friendly craft 
pouring in a stream of bullets; the next, the 
aerial battle had disintegrated into a number of 
detached combats — here several planes en- 
gaged on each side, there two hostile airmen 
locked in a duel as though they had the air wholly 
to themselves; at still another point a single 
plane struggling manfully against two or more 
foes. 

It was quite impossible to follow any set plan 
of action, impossible even to keep in mind the 
“do’s” and “dont’s” of the training-camps. 
Each flyer fought according to his own peculiar 
methods, endeavoring so to place himself that 
his peculiar abilities could hatfe full scope. 


THE BLACK HAWKS 285 

Holmquist, for instance, was primarily an 
“ artful dodger,” able to maneuver with such 
startling speed and dexterity that he could strike 
again and again from unexpected angles. Erics- 
son, on the other hand, indulged in no fancy fly- 
ing, but sought only a fair chance for his deadly 
trigger-hand. 

i Dick Allen could never afterward give any 
clear account of his own part in the fight. He 
retained clear enough pictures of details: of 
darting at hostile planes which suddenly van- 
ished from in front of him; of wild swerves and 
dashes to escape threatening destruction; of see- 
ing one Fokker dart past, the machine undam- 
aged, but the pilot stone dead in his seat; of 
abruptly realizing that he had exhausted his sup- 
ply of ammunition for his Lewis — and then 
suddenly comprehending that the remaining Ger- 
man planes were in headlong flight and that the 
battle was over! 

Sixteen of the Black Hawks had flown proudly 
out from the field behind the sheltering hills 
that morning; twelve of them returned at the 
end of the fight. Of the eighteen French planes 
which had taken part in the engagement, seven 
had been sent down, but two of these, it after- 
wards developed, had been able to land behind 
their own lines. 


286 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


A total loss, then, of nine machines out of the 
thirty-four engaged! 

Far heavier, however, had been the German 
losses. Outnumbered from the outset — only 
twenty-nine of their planes had been counted — 
they seemed to have been rather demoralized by 
Godard’s meteor-like plunge through their very 
midst, and to have fought from the start with no 
seeming hope of victory. Only twelve of their 
planes were actually seen to make their escape. 

Although four of the Black Hawks had been 
killed in the fight, it was the loss of Godard, news 
of which reached the camp soon after the return 
of the squadron, which had the most depressing 
effect. Genter, Cameron, Bidwell, and Edsell, 
the four Americans who had fallen, would all be 
missed, but there were dozens of others to take 
their places, while the war might not produce a 
second Godard ! 

When Dick was sent out on patrol duty long 
before dawn the next morning, he rather resented 
the task. After the events of the previous day 
he would have been glad of a little rest. After- 
wards, however, he was glad of the chance. 

He had been out for a couple of hours, with 
the air to himself, and had swept around near 
the scene of the battle. It was just growing light 
on the earth, when out of the sunrise clouds 


THE BLACK HAWKS 


287 

came winging a single German plane. Instantly 
Dick prepared for action, swung the nose of his 
plane toward the foe and began to rise v But the 
German made no effort to meet his attack, and 
a moment later Dick was astonished to see the 
other aviator put both hands above his head — 
the usual signal that he had been put out of 
action. 

Unwilling to strike after this, and yet fearful 
of a trick of some sort, Dick changed his course, 
but kept a watchful eye on the German. 

The latter swept down to a much lower level, 
then, just as he crossed the spot over which God- 
ard’s splendid finish had come, he dropped some- 
thing from the under-side of his plane. 

“I thought so!” Dick exclaimed angrily. 
“ Fool that I was to let him slip ! ” 

But hardly had he swung a second time toward 
the hostile airman, when he checked himself with 
a sharp exclamation. It was not a bomb that the 
German had dropped. Between the Fokker 
and the earth fluttered a swarm of bright-colored 
dots. 

The German had been sent out in the early 
morning, before the deadly business of the day 
had really commenced, to mark with flowers the 
spot at which the bravest of his foes had fallen ! 


CHAPTER XXXVI 
The Receding Wave 

Some day years hence, when the whole history 
of the Great War has been written, it will be 
possible to get a clear and comprehensive idea of 
the battle, or rather the series of battles, which 
accomplished the checking and rolling back of 
the Green Wave. 

At the time these battles were fought, none of 
the participants, not even the airmen who could 
look down from above on wide stretches of 
country, could grasp the complete significance of 
what was being done. They saw detached con- 
tests, important in themselves, but of real sig- 
nificance because of their relation to other 
fragments of the conflict which were hidden from 
sight — or even which had not yet taken place. 
Each day’s events became possible because of 
what had happened yesterday, and cleared the 
way for the operations of to-morrow. 

But even though no man could see everything, 
could not hope even to understand all that he did 
see, there unquestionably did begin to spread 


THE RECEDING WAVE 289 

throughout the Allied forces a feeling of confi- 
dence,* almost of triumph. Men knew that the 
blow struck, by the Germans had been perhaps the 
heaviest delivered since the outbreak of the war; 
it had seemed on the point of succeeding com- 
pletely; the Green Wave had washed deeper 
than ever before — yet it had been stopped and 
flung back; and everywhere sprang up and grew 
the feeling that never again would the danger 
be so great, never again would the foe come so 
close, that perhaps the balance had shifted for 
the last time. 

On that day when the hostile air-fleets fought 
above the fields of France, Dick Allen saw little 
of what was passing on the earth below him, 
and for two days thereafter he knew little of 
what was going on, save that every road 
within sight was glutted with traffic from morn- 
ing until night, and that everything — save the 
ambulances — was moving toward the front. 

But two or three days later the Three Mus- 
keteers were detailed for service which took them 
into the thickest of the fighting, and brought 
them for the first time into close cooperation 
with the land forces. 

Theirs was by no means the only work done 
by the Black Hawks that day, but theirs was a 
detached expedition, and it was the first time 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


290 

that the trio had actually served together with a 
single object. 

It was early in the morning when they rose 
from the flying-field, Dan and Bob in battle- 
planes, Dick alone in a heavier machine of the 
bombing type. Attached to the fuselage of his 
machine were two bombs, each weighing several 
hundred pounds, and carrying a bursting charge 
sufficient to sink a battleship or destroy a good- 
sized public building. 

A trigger-like device, located within easy reach 
of Dick’s hand, enabled him instantly to detach 
either or both of the bombs. 

Dick’s plane was the important member of the 
little fleet, the other two being merely the armed 
convoy, whose duty it was to keep off hostile 
planes while he flew straight to his objective and 
dropped his bombs. 

As soon as they were in the air they assumed 
a regular formation, Dick flying at an altitude 
of about three thousand feet, while the two 
battle-planes soared above and beyond him. 

The upper air was already bright with the 
summer sunlight, but the country beneath the 
three bird-men was still wrapped in shadow. 
Even so, the hostile armies were awake and 
active. The fighting had hardly ceased during 
the night; it had merely died down; and now the 


THE RECEDING WAVE 291 

batteries were again in full cry. The flyers 
could see the red flashes of the discharges and 
of the bursting shells. But it was still too dark 
for any details of the fighting or of the positions 
of the opposing forces to be visible. 

This air-raid of the Three Musketeers, while 
a part of the whole vast battle that was driving 
the Germans out of the great salient they had 
forced in the line between Soissons and Rheims, 
was purely local in character. A certain part of 
the German force, already beginning to fall back 
and engaged now in fighting merely rear-guard 
actions, must, in the course of its retreat, cross 
a small stream. For a distance of some three 
miles the stream was spanned by a single bridge. 
There were several fords, but it was possible 
that the Germans were ignorant of their loca- 
tion. If the bridge could be destroyed it would 
mean that the withdrawal of the German forces 
in this particular pocket would be seriously 
clogged, and that the number of guns and pris- 
oners would be greatly increased. 

There was nothing unusual in the problem 
presented. The Germans would be perfectly 
aware of the value of the bridge to their retreat 
and would certainly make every effort to prevent 
its destruction. Just what form this defense 
would take could not be conjectured. It would 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


292 

depend upon the conditions attending the German 
retreat. If this movement was attended by any 
considerable degree of confusion and disorgan- 
ization, the bridge might be watched by no more 
than a detail of infantry or cavalry. If the 
Germans (as seemed probable from information 
already received) were withdrawing in good 
order, the point would be held in force, defended 
by anti-aircraft guns as well as field-pieces, and 
probably by aircraft as well. 

Leaving the hammering guns behind them — 
for the bridge was of course situated some dis- 
tance in the rear of the line the Germans were 
now defending — the three airmen flew a straight 
course for their objective. The gray mists below 
them were beginning to dissipate under the morn- 
ing sun, and ere long Dick could make out the 
silver course of the stream. A moment later his 
eye found the slim tracery of the bridge. 

Warily he began to descend, the other planes 
hovering close, all three of the men watching for 
hostile planes. They dropped down a couple 
of hundred feet, and simultaneously German 
guns below commenced firing, and two Fokkers 
came slanting swiftly up from the earth. 

Dick paid no attention to the hostile aircraft 
beyond climbing up long enough to give his con- 
voy time to slip down and get between him and 


THE RECEDING WAVE 


293 


the foe, but centered his efforts on getting down 
close enough to the bridge to make sure of his 
stroke. He had no intention of keeping to a safe 
height and risking a miss: he was going to get 
close enough for a sure shot. 

Above him as he dropped down he heard the 
rattling guns of the four planes. He was glad 
the German craft had put in an appearance. 
Their presence in the air temporarily kept the 
batteries beneath from firing, and gave him that 
much more time in which to swing down close to 
his target. 

Had anything been needed to increase his 
eagerness, the sight which met his eyes as he 
circled down would have accomplished it. Per- 
haps a mile from the bridge, in the direction of 
the Allied lines, a body of men in the gray-green 
uniform of the foe came over a rise and marched 
down the slope eastward. Behind them a long 
column began to unwind itself. The raid had 
come just in time: already the retreating Ger- 
mans were coming to the bridge. 

Without so much as glancing up to note the 
progress of the four-cornered fight above him, 
Dick shot down until he was not more than a 
few hundred feet above the bridge, then headed 
into the wind and darted for the mark. 

Not for an instant did he doubt his success. 


294 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


Too many times, both in France and in America, 
he had practiced this same trick with dummy 
bombs — sometimes from a moving plane, some- 
times sitting on the top of a scaffolding and fling- 
ing his bombs at a moving object passing beneath 
him. 

At what he knew was precisely the right in- 
stant, he pressed the trigger which released the 
bombs, and at the same instant tilted the nose 
of his plane to swing above the force of the 
explosion. His nerves tight, he waited for the 
tearing crash. None came! He could not un- 
derstand. Even had he missed the bridge, the 
bombs would have exploded as they fell into the 
water. Could — ! 

He glanced down. The two ugly bombs still 
hung from beneath the plane. In some way 
the mechanism had clogged, and his pull on the 
trigger had failed to release them ! 

It was difficult to imagine a worse situation. 
There he was, hundreds of feet below the zone 
of possible safety, with the German guns already 
beginning to fire at him in spite of the danger 
of hitting their own planes ! And he could not 
possibly land to make repairs. The two bombs 
hung beneath the landing-plane. If he were to 
try to land he would only blow himself and the 
plane to atoms ! 


THE RECEDING WAVE 


295 

Craning his neck over the side of the plane 
he peered down at the bombs, and instantly saw 
the trouble: a knot in the heavy cord leading 
from the trigger to the release had become 
fouled with a strut. From his seat it was impos- 
sible to reach it, but — 

He first pulled the trigger back into its original 
position, set the plane on a long, gradual slant 
upward, unhooked his life-belt, crawled cau- 
tiously out of his seat, then, moving swiftly but 
with infinite caution, wriggled back the three 
feet necessary, reached over, hanging on with one 
hand, jerked at the fouled cord, then leaped 
back to his seat as the plane careened wildly 
and almost slipped out of his control. 

A moment later, unmindful of the shrapnel 
that screamed and whistled around him, he was 
again bearing down on the bridge. A second 
time he gauged speed and distance, a second 
time he pulled the trigger, and this time felt the 
slight lift of the plane as it rose, relieved of the 
weight of the heavy bombs. 

There was silence for a few seconds, then a 
terrific, splintering crash clearly audible above 
the roar of the motor. He looked back. Through 
the pall of smoke he could make out the smashed 
structure of the bridge, damaged beyond all hope 
of repair. 


2 96 THE DRAGON-FLIES 

Then for the first time he looked up. There 
above him, like guardian eagles, Dan Ericsson 
and Bob Holmquist circled. Of the German 
planes one was a mere speck in the distance, the 
second a crumpled mass in a field far below ! 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

From the Hilltop 

Stripped of their heavy flying-togs, the Three 
Musketeers sat on the summit of one of the 
range of hills behind which nestled the camp of 
the Black Hawks Squadron. 

Below them stretched a wide expanse of 
country. Here and there upon its surface little 
white balls marked the position of bursting 
shrapnel. The daylight was beginning to fade, 
and at one point the red glare of a fire set by 
the foe was beginning to show. 

Along every road which they could see from 
their perch crawled columns of troops, long 
strings of guns, wagons, and trucks. And all of 
them, whether in the blue of France or the olive- 
drab of the United States, were moving steadily 
to the east! 

The three men watched the scene for a while 
in silence ; then Holmquist said slowly : 

“ You know, that looks to me like it! ” 

“Like what?” Dick asked. 

“The beginning of the end! ” Holmquist said 
quietly. 


THE DRAGON-FLIES 


298 

“Go slow!” warned Ericsson. 

“ Don’t misunderstand me,” the tall Texan 
said quickly. “I don’t mean I think the war’s 
as good as over, or that we ’ll be in Berlin in a 
week, or any nonsense of that sort. 

“ But this is twice that the German masses 
have come storming victoriously up to the 
Marne, twice that France has said, ‘ They shall 
not pass ! ’ and twice that they ’ve been rolled 
back. 

“And it was different the first time. The 
Boche went back that first winter and sat down 
in his trenches by the Aisne thinking that when 
he was ready he’d come again, and that next 
time he wouldn’t be stopped. He was three 
years coming! 

“He came all right, and what happened? 
Once more France said, ‘They shall not pass! ’ 
and a new voice from overseas added, ‘No, 
darned if they shall ! ’ I believe the Hun has 
heard that new voice. I believe he knows now 
that he never shall pass ! ” 

“ I believe you ’re right! ’’Dick muttered, and 
Dan nodded silent agreemMt. 

“ I ’m sure I am,” Holmquist said confidently. 
“We three will do a lot more flying, and there ’ll 
probably be a lot more fighting. It may be that 
there will be more black days in the future ; but 


FROM THE HILLTOP 299 

I don’t believe any of them will be as black as 
those we Ve put behind us. 

“No, sir, even if the war lasts another two 
years, it’s entered a new phase. All that down 
there” — he waved his hand toward the plain 
below them — “ is the turning of the tide! ” 

They watched in silence while the shadows 
deepened and the summer night fell; then Dan 
Ericsson yawned, stretched his big arms, and 
said: 

“ Well, war or no war, I ’ve got to have my 
sleep! ” 

Laughing, the others rose from the ground and 
joined him. Then the trio locked arms and 
began to descend the hill toward the camp, sing- 
ing softly as they went: 

“ What would the infantry do without us? 

Why are the gunners so keen about us? . . 


THE END 


CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 




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